Maritime Issues Archive

During his visit to New Delhi last December, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, pledged to transform India and Japan’s partnership into a “deep, broad-based and action-oriented relationship.” Behind the lofty rhetoric were several major developments, most of all finally reaching a consensus on the text of a bilateral civil nuclear agreement, long in the works, that would allow Japan to directly export nuclear plants to India. It would be signed, Abe and Modi said, once “technical details” were sorted out. In addition to the nuclear deal, they announced that Japan would provide $12 billion […]

Editor’s note: This is the final article in a WPR series on the South China Sea territorial disputes and the various claimant countries’ approaches to addressing them. The tiny sultanate of Brunei is perhaps the least visible of the six claimants in the South China Sea maritime disputes, in part due to its preferred approach of addressing the issue discreetly. In an email interview, Jatswan Singh, associate professor in the Department of International and Security Studies at the University of Malaya, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, discussed Brunei’s claims in the South China Sea. WPR: What are Brunei’s territorial claims in […]

This past week, Iran satisfied its obligations for implementing the nuclear deal reached last July with world powers, earning it relief from sanctions. The prisoner swap with the United States that followed hinted that a new era of possible cooperation between Washington and Tehran could be in the cards as the result of last year’s hard-earned diplomatic victory. But how relations will unfold, and how they will fare under the next U.S. administration, remain unclear. Iran’s other relationships are also in flux. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran following an attack on its embassy in Tehran […]

On Saturday, Jan. 16, Taiwan will hold a critical election that is likely to see the country vote in its first female president, Tsai Ing-wen. If elected, Tsai, who currently holds a double-digit lead in most polls, would herald a new era of politics in Taiwan and establish only the second government led by the liberal Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after more than seven decades of political dominance by the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party. Adding to the intrigue is the race between the DPP and the KMT for the legislature, known as the Legislative Yuan. The KMT currently has 64 […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the South China Sea territorial disputes and the various claimant countries’ approaches to addressing them. Last November, Malaysia’s deputy prime minister spoke out against China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and questioned Beijing’s historical claims to the region. In an email interview, Prashanth Parameswaran, an associate editor at The Diplomat, discussed Malaysia’s defense of its South China Sea claims. WPR: What are Malaysia’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and with what other countries do they overlap or conflict? Prashanth Parameswaran: Within the South China […]