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While there is a widely accepted international law of the sea, reflected in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the great powers of the world are divided over competing and, in some cases, incompatible, domestic maritime laws or interpretations of UNCLOS. The areas of disagreement extend to fundamental principles, such as which waters lie under a nation state’s jurisdiction and what it is entitled to do, and forbid, in those waters.
Compounding the problem, some of the sharpest divisions have emerged between the world’s two increasingly antagonistic superpowers, China and the United States. Their diverging approaches have already prompted several dangerous encounters at sea. Worse still, the rift has manifested in one of the most hotly contested and strategically volatile waterways of the world, the South China Sea.