• Maritime Security
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-56
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• 2022

Why has India become a key actor in the maritime-configured Indo-Pacific region? There are some external factors, but for India, its geo-strategic frontier encompassing its geopolitical and maritime interests is expanding rapidly beyond its territorial space across both the Indian and Pacific oceans amidst an increasingly arduous geopolitical and security environment. India must, therefore, acquire the ability to influence events within this strategic arena using all facets of national power, including maritime-military power. Lately, therefore, New Delhi has invested much intellectual capital to review its maritime-security strategy. India's new strategy is premised on the concept of holistic security involving the 'softer' aspects of maritime-security, and a rekindling of maritime consciousness in India, a nation that has traditionally been beset by 'sea-blindness'. The strategy adopts a region-wide, inclusive, and a more proactive approach than hitherto, as is evident in its title 'Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy'. While it deals with the growing concern of new non-traditional threats in the Indian littoral and the need for military deterrence and preparedness, it also addresses the imperatives for India to seek a favorable and rules-based benign environment in its immediate and extended maritime periphery, including through multi-vectored strategic partnerships dictated by its enduring principle of strategic autonomy. For a more profound and comprehensive understanding of India's maritime-security strategy, this paper examines the key unstated and implicit factors that underpin the strategy. These include India's historical and cultural evolution as a nation; its strategic geography; its geopolitical and security perceptions; and the political directions to its security forces. The paper deals specifically with India's response to maritime threats ranging from natural disasters, crime and state-sponsored terrorism to those posed by Pakistan and China, as well as the Indian Navy's envisaged security role East of the Malacca Straits. It also analyzes the aspects of organizational restructuring and force planning of India's maritime-security forces.

• Strategy21
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• s.44
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• pp.142-176
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• 2018

So far, the main threat to South Korea was North Korea. That is why South Korea established a strategy based on the threat of North Korea and most of the budget on defense was used to deter North Korea. Even though the neighboring countries(China, Japan, and Russia) are growing as a real threat with abilities and intentions based on their powerful naval forces, South Korea has not yet been able to establish a strategy that regards neighboring countries as a threat. But the decades-old structural mechanism of the Korean security environment is undergoing a radical change on April 27, 2018, through the South-North summit and the Panmunjom Declaration. Under the changing security environment, South Korea was placed in a complicated dilemma that had to deal with threats of two axes(China), three axes(China, Japan), and four axes(Japan, Russia). If the one axis threat(North Korea) is dominated by land threats, the second, third and fourth axis threats are threats from the sea. This paper analyzed the maritime strategy of Korea within the framework of maritime-geopolitics, in other words recognition and expansion of the sphere of maritime. I have designed that the maritime defense space that we can deny from threats is divided into three lines of defense: 1 line (radius 3,000km), 2 lines (2,000km), and 3 lines (1,000km). The three defense zones of the three lines were defined as an active defense(1 line), defensive offense(2 line), active offense(3 line). The three defense zones of the three lines were defined as the sphere of core maritime, As a power to deny the sphere of core maritime, it was analyzed as a maneuvering unit, a nuclear-powered submarine, the establishment of missile strategy, and the fortification of islands station. The marine strategy of South Korea with these concepts and means was defined as 'Offensive Maritime Denial Strategy'.

• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.35-56
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• 2009

After Chinese reforms and market opening, China actively started working on ways to attach importance to the ocean and it's maritime strategy has been developed and carried out by external and internal factors. We can take two things as external factors attributed to China's marine strategy. The first one is maritime environment change in the East Asian region and the second one is the strategic importance of Taiwanese Straits and the South China Sea. And we can take about national strategy, security strategy, and change of foreign policy as internal factors. China recognizes the ocean as a major step to achieve a goal of national development. The main goal of China's marine strategy in the 21st century is to secure marine transportation and marine resources and to make peaceful maritime environment in the ocean to keep up with their economic development by opening itself to the world. China has strengthened their defense abilities to act against threat of national security by modernizing sea forces and increased national power by building up the marine power. It is expected that China will continue to seek more aggressive maritime strategy on matters of national security as well as pour heir efforts into making economic development and obtaining energy resources. This will also be one factor making new dynamics between countries in and around the East Asian region.

• Strategy21
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• s.44
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• pp.291-322
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• 2018

This research aims to cast light upon security characteristics of the Peace Line, which have been underestimated. To understand maritime order and maritime security policy of the Republic of Korea between 1950 and 1970, it is necessary to analyze the Peace Line as line of defence and to investigate its character This research begins with analyzation of historical facts and investigation on security characteristics of the Peace Line. It goes further to examination of legal justification of the Peace Line, which was one of international legal issues of the period, principally regarding its security characteristics. As results of the study, it could be said that the security characteristics of the Peace Line was the line of defensive waters, which set its goal mainly to prevent infiltration of communist spies. The Peace Line had practical effect as it functioned as a base line of the ROK Navy to take anti-spy operation. At the early phase of the Korea-Japan Negotiation, the Korea delegation interpreted significance of the Peace Line passively. After abrogation of Clark Line, the delegation, however, became positive to maintain the Peace Line and its security characteristics. Security characteristics of the Peace Line was recognized again, as it became the base line of special maritime zone which was made in 1972. Through analysis on international law, it is concluded that the Peace Line was fair as a part of the right of self-defense against indirect aggression. North Korea attempted indirect aggression mainly from sea way, and these might undermine peace and cause urgent and unjust damage on the ROK. Thus the ROK's action of anti-spy operation through the Peace Line can be justifiable as considering the right of self-defence. Also the Peace Line accorded with principles of necessity, immediacy and proportionality. As it was argued on the above, the Peace Line as line of defence was one of the most significant factor in the ROK's maritime security history from the Hot war against communist forces to Cold war period after Korean War and must not be underestimated.

• Strategy21
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• s.36
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• pp.5-32
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• 2015

Geopolitics or Political Geography is an essential academic field that should be studied carefully for a more comprehensive analysis of international security relations. However, because of its tarnished image as an ideology that supported the NAZI German expansion and aggression, geopolitics has not been regarded as a pure academic field and was rejected and expelled from the academic communities starting from the Cold War years in 1945. During the Cold War, ideology, rather than geography, was considered more important in conducting and analyzing international relations. However, after the end of the Cold War and with the beginning of a new era in which territorial and religious confrontations are taking place among nations - including sub national tribal political organizations such as the Al Quaeda and other terrorist organizations - geopolitical analysis again is in vogue among the scholars and analysts on international security affairs. Most of the conflicts in international relations that is occurring now in the post-Cold War years can be explained more effectively with geopolitical concepts. The post - Cold War international relations among East Asian countries are especially better explained with geopolitical concepts. Unlike Europe, where peaceful development took place after the Cold War, China, Japan, Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Vietnam are feeling more insecure in the post-Cold War years. Most of the East Asian nations' economies have burgeoned during the Cold War years under the protection of the international security structure provided by the two superpowers. However, after the Cold War years, the international security structure has not been stable in East Asia and thus most of the East Asian nations began to build up stronger military forces of their own. Because most of the East Asian nations' national security and economy depend on the oceans, these nations desire to obtain more powerful navies and try to occupy islands, islets, or even rocks that may seem like a strategic asset for their economy and security. In this regard, the western Pacific Ocean is becoming a place of confrontation among the East Asian nations. As Robert Kaplan, an eminent international analyst, mentioned, East Asia is a Seascape while Europe is a Landscape. The possibility of international conflict on the waters of East Asia is higher than in any other period in East Asia's international history.

• Strategy21
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• s.33
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• pp.148-177
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• 2014

The regional security and stability in Northeast Asia has become more complicated because of a sudden establishment of China's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on 23 November 2013. One dimensional conflicts on the territorial sovereignty over the islands between the regional States has developed into the two dimensional conflicts like maritime delimitations among the States concerned since they have all ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which adopts the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone regime. Moreover, due to the notion of the outer limit of the continental shelf, the conflicts have developed into three dimensional ones in order to acquire more natural resources even in the seabed. To make matters worse, such three dimensional conflicts have expanded to the airspace as well. The paper will analyze what implications the sudden declaration of China's ADIZ have for the regional security in Northeast Asia from the perspectives of public international law. To this end, the paper 1) starts with the debates on the legal nature of the ADIZ, 2) identifies the Chinese government's political motives for the establishment of the ADIZ over the East China Sea, 3) assesses the responses of the regional States and the USA to the China's establishment of the ADIZ, and then 4) discuss what implications the overlapped ADIZ of the three key States in the region have for the regional security and stability.

• Maritime Security
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.93-117
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• 2020

Four cargo ships were ambushed by bombs in 2019 while navigating in the Strait of Hormuz. It was not clear who attacked those ships, however, many nations including the United States argued that it was Iran due to several reasons. The United States established the maritime collective defense system named International Maritime Security Construct (IMSC) in order to protect the maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, without disclosure against whom it is aimed. Persian, who uses the Persian language unlike other countries in the Middle East, is the major ethnic group in Iran, and most of them believe Shi'ah Islam while most of the Arabs in the Gulf countries adhere to Sunni Islam. It seems that historic and religious motives caused the bipolar system in the Middle East, however, it is plausible to analyze the system of international affairs in the Middle East via defensive or structural realism. Iran has attempted to maintain its hegemony in the region by supporting Shi'ah muslims in the neighboring countries as well as in the world by using military and economic means. In this context, Iran's maritime strategy is to maintain its maritime hegemony on the Persian Gulf via countering threats and cooperating with friendly navies by using the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy(IRIN) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy(IRGCN). IRIN acts like other navies in the world: protecting national interest at sea, expending its operational areas to the outer seas, and enhancing cooperation with other navies. Meanwhile, IRGCN plays a role as an asymmetric force at sea. It is composed of small and fast asymmetric assets, which can ambush ships fast and furious. Considering the poor study for Iran's maritime strategy in Korea, analyzing the strategy is meaningful for the Republic of Korea Navy, which has operated the Cheonghae Unit for more than ten years since it has extended its operational area over the Strait of Hormuz. In order not to be drawn into the conflict in the Strait, research on the maritime strategy of Iran and other countries in the Middle East should be started.

• Strategy21
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• s.37
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• pp.32-64
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• 2015

This paper examines the types and trends of North Korea's military provocations and regional maritime threats against South Korea, and is focusing on the Republic of Korea's naval development and modernizations by the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) on future actions, what directions of the ROKN has taken thus far in response, as well as an examination of how the ROKN might respond to vulnerabilities identified throughout modern history. Importantly, this paper does not consider the domestic, bilateral, multilateral, regional and global political dimensions of the situation on the Korean Peninsula; nor does it consider the North Korea's transitional power politics, but including North Korea's nuclear program and submarine-launched ballistic missile developments, as a caveat, this paper is based on open sources in Korean and English language, and thus information concerning provocations is indicative only.

• Strategy21
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• s.40
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• pp.131-143
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• 2016

On 12 July 2016, China's maritime claim to most of the South China Sea (SCS) based on the so-called nine-dash line was rejected by the Arbitral Tribunal, constituted under Annex VII to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning issues in the South China Sea including the legality of the so-called "nine-dashed line", the status of certain maritime features and their corresponding maritime entitlements, together with the lawfulness of certain actions by China which the Philppines, in a case brought in 2013, alleged were violations. As having the Tribunal determined that China's claim had no legal grounds in UNCLOS, thus undermining China's claims, and establishing that China has no exclusive legal rights to control the area roughly the size of India. There are some major implications from the Tribunal's ruling in the Arbitration award. These include implications on: how to delimit the maritime boundary in disputed waters, how to promote maritime confidence-building measures, how to safeguard maritime safety and security, and how to promote the rule of law in the SCS. Since its application of UNCLOS in East Asia, it has been obvious that the only way to resolve maritime disputes in the region is to build strong maritime cooperative partnerships under the auspices of the rule of law.

• Strategy21
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• s.33
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• pp.178-201
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• 2014

China National People's Congress has passed the bill to combine the Marine Law Enforcement into "State Oceanic Administration People's Republic of China". This bill was intended to resolve the overlapping jurisdiction and disputes caused in ocean territory in nearby countries. The purpose of reorganizing the administration was to combine the dispersed organization into one group. This new big administration was basically organized to increase the power of China marine state on the long-term. The reorganization plan is to group General Administration of Customs, China Marine Surveillance, Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, and Border Control Department into one State Oceanic Administration. The new state Oceanic Administration carries the authority to protect rights and enforce the marine law supported by Public Security Bureau. Korea Coast Guard has been cooperating with China Marine Surveillance since 1998 when the first pact was made. The next step expanded to General Administration of Customs. Currently working with Regional Maritime Law Enforcement organizations dealing mostly with illegal Chinese fishing boats and IEODO conflict. In order to solve the problems we face today is to observe the process of the New China Coast Guard administration, analysing the effects that could be caused by the change and to keep close cooperation between the new administrations.