ABSTRACT
Given the friction between China and the United States in recent years over the proper balance of coastal state control and international freedoms in jurisdictional seas in East Asia, each is compelled to ask what framework of norms will best provide for national and international security in the coming century? The divergent answers that China and the United States have so far supplied can largely be explained by traditional thinking about geography and the role geography serves in framing a state’s immutable strategic interests and the policies that inform their maritime strategies. However, although modern globalism knits together the economic interests of all states, regardless of geography, it also brings as much vulnerability as it presents opportunity for economic and political development. This reality calls for a rethinking of current security frameworks that emphasize geographic differences among major powers and turning to a framework that emphasizes cooperative efforts to achieve common security interests. Accordingly, the norms that will provide the foundation for law of the sea for the twenty-first century must continue to evolve from their nineteenth and twentieth-century roots in order to support the new realities of the maritime domain as it changes and develops. This will require continental and maritime powers alike to think beyond geography-based perspectives about international law to secure their mutual interests by developing realistic approaches to security for the new century.
