Managing Non-Traditional Security Concerns in the Context of Competing Maritime Claims: A Path to Peace or a Road to Nowhere

The South China Sea (SCS), which extends over 3.5 million kilometres with an average depth of 2000 metres1 has become synonymous with intractable territorial and maritime delimitation disputes with the disagreement over the Spratly Archipelago (involving six nations - China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines) and the Paracel Archipelago (3 nations – Vietnam, China and Taiwan) being the most high profile of the disputes. What I would like to do in this paper, as part of this project, is to explore the extent to which a focus on non-traditional security concerns actually represents a viable pathway either to the resolution of the territorial and maritime delimitation disputes between the competing claimants or to the development of a long term interim solution whereby a framework is developed allowing states to manage the region without resolving those disputes