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Global Power Shift, Geography, and Maritime East Asia

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International Order at Sea

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Abstract

Tunsjø examine the tension and rivalry that erupts in maritime East Asia as a result of China’s rising power and its sea power ambitions. A secure and dominating China on the Asia mainland is expanding into its nearby seas seeking to safeguard sovereignty, resources, and security claims. The geopolitical development of China going to the seas can hardly be reversed as China grows more powerful. At the same time, it is natural for China’s neighbors and the U.S. to be alarmed by this geopolitical shift and seek to counter China’s ambitions. As a result, rivalry intensifies, the U.S. led international order at sea is challenged, and the risk of conflict and even war increases.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Oslo, Norway

    Øystein Tunsjø

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  1. Øystein Tunsjø
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Oslo, Norway

    Jo Inge Bekkevold

  2. King’s College London, United Kingdom

    Geoffrey Till

Additional information

This chapter draws on presentations at the conference “International Order at Sea,” Norwegian Naval Academy, Bergen, September 22, 2015; the International Studies Association (ISA) annual conference, Toronto, Canada, 28 March 2014; and the SIPRI conference titled The Hu Jintao decade in China’s foreign and security policy, Stockholm 18–19 April 2013. I would like to thank the various participants at these conferences for their valuable comments. I have also benefitted from participating in the International Order at Sea international workshop series and would like to thank Robert Ross, Bud Cole, Peter Dutton, Andrew Erickson, David Finkelstein, Zhang Tuosheng, Zhang Haiwen, Yoji Koda, Sarabjeet Singh Parmar, Ian Bowers, Johannes Rø, and the editors for feedback, comments and discussions. The views in the chapter, of course, are entirely the authors.

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Tunsjø, Ø. (2016). Global Power Shift, Geography, and Maritime East Asia. In: Bekkevold, J., Till, G. (eds) International Order at Sea. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58663-6_3

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