Operational Law in International Straits and Current Maritime Security Challenges by Jörg Schildknecht Rebecca Dickey Martin Fink & Lisa Ferris

Author:Jörg Schildknecht, Rebecca Dickey, Martin Fink & Lisa Ferris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

2 The Meaning of Conflict

It is not the major purpose of this contribution to canvass a complete history of conflict in order to reach a satisfactory description that can be used to comprehensively cover the range of military activity that might eventuate in the South China Sea. Instead, a convenient starting point has been chosen, perhaps arbitrarily, by travelling back 70 years and considering that despite the prohibition contained in the UN Charter11 on States resorting to the threat or use of force in settling their international differences, the reality is that since 1945 there have been numerous occasions throughout the world in which armed conflict has occurred.

At the time of writing, the International Institute of Strategic Studies Armed Conflict Database reports that there are 42 active conflicts underway throughout the world12 yet none of these conflicts has any significant maritime dimension. It is also noted that post-1945 conflicts have not been restricted to any particular geographical area, and conflicts that have occurred have varied greatly in terms of the characterisation of the conflict as international armed conflict (IAC) or non-international armed conflict (NIAC), the length of conflict and the intensity of the fighting.13 However, by far the vast majority of post-1945 armed conflicts have involved battles between land forces, with relatively few examples of conflict occurring in the maritime environment.

But there should be no misapprehension. There is undoubtedly the potential for conflict to emerge between vessels at sea, and in some post-1945 cases this potential has been realised with consequent loss of life and destruction of vessels.14 Thus, one of the questions raised by this contribution is to ask why, even when tensions have escalated between States since 1945, and even when these tensions have resulted in armed conflict occurring between land (and air) forces, has there not been, in most cases, corresponding major battles among naval forces. Prior to 1945, this was certainly not the case, as the examples of World War II, World War I and the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905 demonstrate.

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