Why not a protected marine area?
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Here's a solution for the South China Sea issue: allocate disputed islands according to where they are located. In other words, if they are located within a country's 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), they belong to that country.
There is a map, put out by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which clearly shows where the disputed islands lie in respect to each claimant country’s EEZ.
According to the above-described EEZ outline, Brunei and Vietnam each get a rock. Malaysia and Philippines each get about a dozen rocks. China, which claims them all, actually gets some of the Paracel Islands. Additionally, there are about half a dozen rocks that lie in international waters, and thus are not the possession of any country.
Indeed, the best solution would be to have all the three dozen little rock islands declared an international marine sanctuary, But that’s as unlikely to happen as the prospect of China easing off its unreasonable claims. Except for the Paracels, which are equidistant from Vietnam and China, all the other marine rocks are five times as far from China as they are from the other claimant countries.
The South China Sea is a potential flashpoint for war. Let’s avoid that.
Ken Albertsen
Chiang Rai
