The two sides will find it increasingly difficult to avoid intense security competition over the coming decades, but there are still meaningful choices to make.
Aristyo Rizka Darmawan is Lecturer in international law at the Universitas Indonesia and a former Visiting Fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University. Currently he is a PhD Scholar at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the intersection between international law of the sea and maritime security in the Asia Pacific.
China’s neighbours are keen to base the code on international law, which Beijing has repeatedly been accused of disregarding in asserting its claim to 90 per cent of the South China Sea.
Today’s Red Sea skirmishes raise multifaceted concerns, which range from the war in Gaza widening and awakening old wounds, to geopolitical frontlines being rewritten by shifting chokepoints.