The Purchase of the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands by Japan

In the 1930s the United Stated and Japan had a turbulent relationship as the result of Japan trying to expand into China and take their territory as well as take over their economy by force resulting in a variety of horrible events done to the Chinese. To reprimand Japan for their aggression towards China and to try to force them to end their aggression the United States put in place a system of economic sanctions and trade embargoes to cut off essential goods. Instead, this only made the Japanese more determined and after months of discussion no peaceful conclusion could be reached. This in turn led to the events on an island 2,000 miles from the U.S. mainland and 4,000 miles from Japan. The name of this island is Pearl Harbor, which was

the practice by which powerful nations or social orders hope to create and keep up control or effect over weaker nations or society. By the 1800 's, the Western powers had central focuses in this technique. They drove the world in creative advances, giving them a quality while vanquishing distinctive countries. The European Imperialists made tries to vanquish China and Japan. In this methodology, they succeeded by affecting Japan immensely. In any case, they were not as productive with China.

Once the Okinawa Reversion Treaty was signed by Japan and the Untie States, the return of the Ryukyu Islands were in full control to Japan. With the return of the islands to Japan seemed to set a better security alliance between the Untied States and Japan. As part of Okinawa the Unites States government set of boundaries for the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. With Nixon as President during the time he wanted peace in the pacific. But a neutral stance by the Nixon administration was taken on their sovereignty. Nixon’s with hopes of ending the Vietnam War but his priorities with retaining bases in Okinawa and normalizing relations with the Peoples Republic of China

Kon'nichiwa! I’m Japan! You probably know me for my aesthetic cherry blossoms and splendid anime, but let me tell you, things weren’t always as kawaii as they seemed. For a loooong time, I was isolated from other countries by my own shoguns and daimyos, my militaristic dictators and their warrior landlords respectively. We got along fine at first, but my common people were becoming increasingly unhappy with their little political power and heavy taxes. Then, on a fateful day in July of 1853, I met… the West.

This confrontation between Japan and the United States impacted the battles to come in the Pacific. History has proven the island of Midway to be an important base for many operations during World War II. Had the United States lost this battle, the war may have reached a different outcome.

The real beginning of the tension between America and Japan began during WWI. In 1915, Japan issued “Twenty-One demands” to China’s government. These demands included giving Japan control over Chinese ports, increasing Japan’s leasehold on the South Manchuria Railway Zone for 99 years, handing over rights to settle and commercialize Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, give control of the Hanyeping mining complex to Japan, barring China to give any coastal or territorial concessions to foreign powers, excluding Japan.

December 7th 1941 will always be a day that lives in infamy; the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in an effort to gain access to more resources for war. Thousands were injured and four battleships were sinking to the seafloor, this triggered war on Japan and ultimately the dropping of the atom bomb.

From the beginning of the 1900s tension had grown between the Soviet Union and Japan after the Russo-Japanese War. In 1904, the Soviet Union’s empire and Japan’s empire collided in their own individual efforts take Manchuria, which is a part of China, and Korea(Young). Japan tried to talk the Soviet Union into letting them take over Korea, so the Soviet Union could go capture Manchuria. But the Soviet Union also wanted the northern part of Korea, so the Japanese government declared war against the Soviet Union.

As of today, China has expanded and built over seven artificial islands in the South China Sea since 2014. The South China Sea has recently come to be a major problem in Asia as issues have risen over who has rights of passage and claims in this area. The Chinese of recent have been making territorial claims in the South China Sea that are in areas of free passage for many other Asian countries and the United States. In October 2015, a U.S. guided missile destroyer encountered one of the artificial islands and China’s response was that it would “take any measure” to maintain its security in “their territory”. The Chinese have been questioned in the Permanent Court of Arbitration by the Philippines after claiming rights to historical locations in the South China Sea, which violates sovereign rights of the Philippines, yet China responded to this outcome with refusal and has continued to advance itself in the territory causing huge disputes with its neighboring countries as freedom of navigation has been compromised through China’s actions.. In order to guarantee resolution and maintain the freedom of navigation aspect of international law there needs to be a foreign policy put in place that puts more United States military in the South China Sea with support from disputing countries like Japan and the Philippines as a way to make the issue multilateral and law abiding.

In July 2013, Wenweipo - the pro-PRC Chinese-language newspaper published an article titled “Six Wars China is sure to fight in the next 50 years”. According to this article, after unification of Taiwan (year 2020 to 2025), China will take the second war: Reconquest of Spratly Islands (year 2025 to 2030) and “China will send the ultimatum to countries surrounding the Islands with the deadline of 2028. The countries having disputes on the sovereignty of Islands can negotiate with China on preserving their shares of investments in these Islands by giving up”. In 1999, two Chinese military colonels – authors of the book namely “Unlimited War” suggested using an “unlimited war” to solve the disputing in the South China Sea. These authors said that, to avoid a war does not mean that not using military force and a conflict is indispensable. However, there is one more important thing that to control the intensities of conflict that. It is necessary to conduct some special activities to prove the sovereignty of China in the disputing Spratly Islands but do not let this activities increase to the total war. These things prove that the potential war between Vietnam and China in the future could be come true.

An enduring dispute over Dokdo Island has proven difficult to resolve. Japan and Korea have been having an argument over the island for sovereignty ever since 1910 (South). This island has three names, Dokdo, Takeshima, and Liancourt. Dokdo, a solitary island, is a Korean name for this island. Takeshima, a Bamboo Island, is what Japanese call it. Both Japan and South Korea uses historical facts to support their claims for the island (Profile). To what extent is the dispute between Korea and Japan an issue about resources versus history?

The territorial and maritime disputes over the South China Sea (SCS) have been ongoing for decades. The disputes have been considered to be one the fiercest-contested in Asia. The South China Sea is an enclosed sea surrounded by several different states. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan, and Malaysia all surrounded the South China Sea. The main cause of tension in this dispute is because China claims to have “historical sovereignty” over all of the South China Sea. Associations of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have come up with different discussions and suggestions on how to end the disputes with favorable conditions for all contending states. They use the principles of the United Nation Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and form the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The states surrounding the South China Sea possess 12 nautical miles territorial sea and 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zones (EEZs). Thus, the South China Sea is not only international waters, instead, it is also overlapping exclusive economic zones. According to UNCLOS, disputes over exclusive economic zones must be resolved through negotiations by the contending states. Many of these contending Southeast Asian states have negotiated their maritime boundaries, however, China fails to comply. China claims that it owns all of the South China Sea, and therefore, has no need to

This research tries to present both sides of the argument on the control over the islands from the Chinese and Vietnamese point of view, but has an emphasis on how the United States plays a vital role in the resolution of this dispute.

The United States is currently entangled with China over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The location of these islands is approximately 500 miles from the Chinese mainland and also has islands claimed by numerous countries including China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan. These ownership of these islands is in question ever since March of 2012 when 21 Vietnamese fishermen were detained by the Chinese due while fishing near the islands, with the Chinese claiming that they had entered Chinese waters. In addition to suddenly enforcing the waters and territory as exclusively theirs, the Chinese have also begun creating artificial islands on top of existing reefs. While some of these countries have also partaken in island expansion, none have done so at the rate of the Chinese. China has managed to build massive infrastructure on 3,000 acres on the top of existing reefs in a matter of two years. What took Vietnam four years to complete only took the Chinese slightly over one year.

In the Western Pacific, the South China Sea is a global crossroads that holds strategic importance for many nations world wide. The South China Sea stretches from the Taiwan and Luzon Straits in the north to Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca in the south with Vietnam on the west and the Philippines and Borneo on the east. In total size, the South China Sea surpasses the Mediterranean Sea. However, unlike this Near-Eastern comparator, territorial disputes and conflicting claims threaten the movement of global trade through the South China Sea, thus unbalancing regional stability in the Asia-Pacific. Claimants include the bordering coastal countries of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan), the