Center for a New American Security

Over the past few years, headlines from the South China Sea have focused on the region’s long-standing territorial disputes, China’s changing maritime posture and escalating rhetoric. While these challenges command high-level attention, the United States also has new enduring partnerships, economic relationships, and diplomatic interests that warrant deep examination and inclusion in a future American approach to the region.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has launched a project to evaluate America’s interests in the South China Sea region and examine it as a microcosm of emerging trends in American national security and foreign policy. The project weighs evidence of both conflict and cooperation centered in the South China Sea in order to judge, on balance, where trends in the region may be leading. CNAS analysts will produce short research reports on natural resources, security forces assistance, the evolving military balance, changing approaches to regional diplomacy, and the rule of law. Through research, dialogues, and working groups on these diverse topics, CNAS scholars will assess what conflict and cooperation in these areas portends for America’s broader interests in East Asia and map a comprehensive U.S. strategy for the region.

In January 2012, CNAS released a six-chapter volume entitled, “Cooperation from Strength: The United States, China, and the South China Sea,” which argues that American interests are increasingly at risk in the South China Sea due to the economic and military rise of China as well as concerns about its willingness to uphold existing legal norms.  CNAS concurrently launched Flashpoints, a comprehensive research tool on the South and East China Seas.  The Flashpoints Project features an incidents map with historical and recent data points, an interactive timeline, bulletins by experts and scholars and research resources.