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Palgrave Macmillan

Order, Contestation and Ontological Security-Seeking in the South China Sea

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Anisa Heritage

    1. School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

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  2. Pak K. Lee

    1. School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Draws on not only the study of Southeast Asian maritime history and international law, but more importantly international order and national identity theories
  • Exposes the consequences of historical and present negative identification and misrecognition of great power roles on order- and consensus-building in the South China Sea
  • Highlights the challenges for great powers if they seek to change the status quo without garnering social consent

Part of the book series: Governance, Security and Development (GSD)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 1-23

  3. Theoretical Framework: International Order-Building, Ontological Security and Legitimation

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 25-54

  4. American Construction of Regional Order in the Asia-Pacific, 1945–1955

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 55-104

  5. Developments in Regional Maritime Order from the 1970s: UNCLOS and the US Principle of Freedom of Navigation

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 105-137

  6. China’s Contestation of US Order-Building

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 139-163

  7. Regional Contestation of China’s Order-Building Project

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 165-206

  8. Conclusions: A Sino-American Grand Bargain to Settle the Disputes?

    • Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee
    Pages 207-228

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 229-265
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines the South China Sea territorial disputes from the perspective of international order. The authors argue that both China and the US are attempting to impose their respective preferred orders to the region and that the observed disputes are due to the clash of two competing order-building projects. Ordering the maritime space is essential for these two countries to validate their national identities and to achieve ontological security. Because both are ontological security-seeking states, this imperative gives them little room for striking a grand bargain between them. The book focuses on how China and the US engage in practices and discourses that build, contest, and legitimise the two major ordering projects they promote in the region. It concludes that China must act in its legitimation strategy in accordance with contemporary publicly accepted norms and rules to create a legitimate maritime order, while the US should support ASEAN in devising a multilateral resolution of the disputes.

Reviews

“This book is a useful addition to the OST literature, supplementing the many such case studies on Poland, the EU, Russian order building, even the British role in the American Civil War. It is masterfully researched with comprehensive bibliographies and analytical footnotes on both OST and SCS.” (James L Huskey, Governance, Issue (1-3), 2020)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Anisa Heritage, Pak K. Lee

About the authors

Anisa Heritage is Research Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, UK.


Pak K. Lee is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Politics and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, UK.

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