All Asian Maritime Disputes

If you think Versailles was unfair, you should have seen Brest-Litovsk...

Gettin' to be a bit of a derail, so to bring it back on topic, yes, China has the advantage of knowing what happened back in WWI, and hopefully is taking that into account. Still, knowing the risk does not eliminate the risk. Japan is re-arming, the US is sending military aircraft and ships all over the place, S. Korea is feeling "pinched", and of course, N Korea is overdue for implosion. Anything could happen.

Take this for example: "China’s military is holding large-scale military maneuvers near the North Korean border amid new signs of political instability in Pyongyang."

It isnt completely impossible that China could be planning to simply invade NK when the crap finally hits the fan. How the West might respond to that is anybody's guess- I dont think anyone would try to interfere, but who knows?

The whole point is, there are several dozen points of instability in the region, and no one could possibly come up with a plan that would account for them all.

They'd have to be L-Elf to come up with that plan.

I doubt even China knows what's going on inside North Korea at the moment.

Part of me wonders if NK knows what's going on in NK at the moment.

Who's Belgium in this analogy? Taiwan?

...A very tiny Poland? Wouldn't that fit Taiwan better?

edited 22nd Dec '13 10:44:07 AM by Euodiachloris

Depends how it starts, also is North Korea Austria? Does that make South Korea Serbia?

Now, now, guys, you're going to make Quag angry again.

No problem, demarquis. Maybe one derail is kinda okay.

That being said, the situation involving China, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and so forth is way different from pre-World War I. First of all, the world is far more connected, and a war between two Asian nations would harm everyone to a certain extent (the exception probably being a war involving North Korea, but that's for other thread).

Second, the geo-political map in East and Southeast Asia is way different from Europe's map from that time. There's also the fact that the UN will probably avoid escalating tensions (the other nations probably also want to avoid).

Despite the probability of a small accident happening, the system of alliances and treaties is different from World War I. There's also more at stake nowadays, so most nations involved in the Asian scenario are reluctant to engage in active conflict. In fact, they're very likely to want to avoid conflict altogether.

And finally, this is about maritime disputes, not colonial empires, not tensions between nations with great (terrestrial) borders, and there's fundamentally a dispute regarding various islands, not lots of terrain. The conflict is mostly of an economic nature (and a need to divert the people from more pressing issues inside their respective nations), from what I've been reading these past months.

edited 22nd Dec '13 12:18:55 PM by Quag15

There's also ASEAN which is supposedly to play a role in this. Originally, the conflict with the East China Sea/West Philippine Sea was supposed to be settled between ASEAN and China, but Vietnam got involved and divisions between the South East Asian nations hindered the process.

Sadly, I don't know much about that yet, so I'll have to read some of the stuff (especially involving Vietnam) about it.

Senkaku Weirdness to Start Off the Year.

Also, they can also cooperate when necessary regarding the islands.

Looks like the articles may influence Japanese defence policy in setting up a marine/naval infantry corp by using the Western Army Infantry Regiment (which is a special forces group) as the nucleus.

Btw, do you know how many people does the Western Army Infantry Regiment have?

Word of God (according to defense sources) say at least the equivalent of 3-4 infantry companies.

Although any future marine/naval infantry force will be small at first due to possible tensions with everyone in the Asia-Pacific region, given their experience with Imperial Japanese marines before and due to what marines/naval infantry usually do.

A bit off topic, but in the light of another recent history text books change of content, the quantity of troops may fluctuate.

So a battalion-sized rapid reaction force? Sounds more like an organizational reshuffle than anything really significant.

What MOD is going to do is use some of the WAIR operators who trained with American Marines as the first generation of a future Japanese marine/naval infantry corp.

They're getting 16 AAV-7P1s as we speak under JGSDF command.

They're certainly experienced, but they're still not that many, considering the entire maritime area in dispute, from my point of view.

It seems to be an organizational reshuffle, indeed.

Indeed. Most of their training is done in California, which they have done for a while since Japan doesn't have enough space and they don't wanna provoke more trouble from its Asian neighbours.

But the measure in itself is still malicious, right? We're talking about a regime that's trying to change JSDF into JNDA (Japan's National Defense Army)

Maybe a little far-fetched — the JDF would be fine for now.

I do expect that Article 9 won't survive the next 20 years, though, considering current conditions in that part of the world at the moment, and trends in Japanese media^note  See how many military-based Anime & Manga have appeared in the last few years, including a few with possibly Nationalist undertones? and society.

Mind you, it is something I'm in two minds about, both concerned considering the past, and yet somewhat interested that Japan is reasserting its latent strength.

So, wait and see. Wait and see.

edited 4th Jan '14 3:48:28 PM by Greenmantle

I have to agree. The Japanese government is really trying hard to avoid getting in trouble with regards to changing anything in its constitution and the makeup of the SDF at the moment. They're just following thorough studies ATM.

If it's really trying hard it shouldn't be pulling the 'change textbooks' card for another time, especially when the books are going to state that the isles belong to Japan.

Understandable.

But I feel that we may be heading off topic again...

That's the wonder of the texbook issue: it's actually related to the maritime dispute at hand.