The Great Wall of Sand

The United States challenges China’s broad claims to the South China Sea and the buildup of small islands claimed by other nations. Each country dispatches military vessels to the area, and exchanges between crews could be cast as friendly or taunting. “The friendly conversation obscured a chilling fact: that these were crews of ships from two nations which, in some scenarios, are heading for an earth-shaking confrontation as they play out the ‘Thucydides Trap’, in which rising and status quo powers are bound to come into conflict along the lines of Athens and Sparta, as recorded by the ancient Greek historian,” writes author Jonathan Fenby for New Statesman. He adds that East Asia accounts for a quarter of the world’s GDP. “China and the US know they need a degree of co-operation but also want to hedge their bets to defend their own positions. There is a mutual lack of trust, complicated by the network of overlapping regional differences in a part of the world that lacks a strategic system to resolve disputes.” Historical animosities, nationalism, hikes in military budgets by countries throughout the region, disregard for international rules, and the potential for accidental or deliberate conflict are destabilizing the region. – YaleGlobal