Berlin: Springer, 2014. xvii, 266 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$129.00, cloth. ISBN 978-3-642-54394-4.
Indonesia consists of over 17,500 islands, around 6000 of which are inhabited by a population in excess of 250 million people forming the world’s largest archipelago stretching nearly 5000 kilometres from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east.
Indonesia’s sheer size, together with the proximity of a wide range of neighbouring coastal states, has resulted in a multiplicity of potentially overlapping maritime boundaries, the delimitation of which is crucial to everything from good governance of living and nonliving marine resources to protection of the environment, to freedom of navigation.
This newly revised version of a previous work thoughtfully and accurately updates important developments that have occurred over the past while in the area of conflict resolution and maritime boundary delimitation, including: revisions to Indonesia’s archipelagic baseline system; a dispute over the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) boundary between Indonesia and Australia; maritime boundary issues associated with the independence of East Timor; and the resolution of a dispute before the International Court of Justice between Indonesia and Malaysia over sovereignty over two islands, Pulau and Sipadan.
Indonesia’s Delimited Maritime Boundaries consists of an introduction, three main chapters, and a conclusion. The three main chapters focus on: explaining and critically reviewing the legal foundation for Indonesia’s maritime jurisdictional zones; providing a chronology of how Indonesia has so far determined maritime boundaries; and contemplating the future, including disputes Indonesia may have in the future, including with China. Also touched on are the crucial leadership role played by Indonesia in the negotiation and implementation of the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; and the background and history to the over 17 maritime boundary disputes that Indonesia has successfully resolved with Malaysia, Australia, India, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. These materials are all exceedingly well supported with a wide range of figures, maps, diagrams, and appendices.
This volume is an important contribution to the scholarly academic literature regarding maritime boundary delimitation. It also affirms the timely and indispensible role the rule of law could, and should, play in conflict resolution and preventive diplomacy throughout the world in general and in the South China Sea in particular.
The current risk of conflict in the South China Sea is particularly significant. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines
are among the sovereign states that have competing territorial and jurisdictional claims, particularly over rights to exploit the region’s possibly extensive reserves of oil and gas. Marine environmental quality, conservation of living marine resources, and freedom of navigation in the region are also contentious issues, especially between the United States and China, including over the right of US military vessels to operate in China’s two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). According to Bonnie S. Glaser, senior advisor for Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies, these tensions are shaping, and being shaped by, rising apprehensions about the growth of China’s military power and regional intentions. China has embarked on a substantial modernization of maritime paramilitary forces as well as naval capabilities to enforce sovereignty and jurisdiction claims by force if necessary. In this context there is much to be learned from Indonesia’s thoughtful application of the rule of law to resolve both real and potential maritime boundary disputes. There is also a compelling case to be made for Indonesian leadership on these issues throughout the region.
This volume should be of particular interest to those with an interest in maritime boundaries, conflict resolution, and ASEAN countries.
Richard Kyle Paisley
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 945-946