ABSTRACT
The long road towards peace and cooperation in the South China Sea started back in the late 1980s. This was after several decades of disputes and confrontation that began soon after the end of World War II when countries around the South China Sea first started making claims to sovereignty over features within the sea. In the late 1980s, before the conclusion of the Cambodian war through the Peace Agreement in Paris in 1991, I recognized that prospects for peace and cooperation might finally have come to Southeast Asia despite worrying developments and conflicts in the South China Sea.
