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This book explores China's use of faits accomplis in its periphery, and offers the first formal model for the use of faits accomplis by rising powers. With growing attention to great power competition and conflict in the gray zone between war and peace, this book explains China's use of faits accomplis to revise the maritime status quo in the South and East China Seas. Using formal modelling and case study analysis, the book argues that while power shifts provide rising states with opportunities to impose faits accomplis to revise the status quo, the use of faits accomplis also increase the likelihood of war with the dominant state(s). The book surveys existing understandings of how power shifts incentivize interstate competition in general and in the case of Sino-American competition in particular, and brings existing theory and novel modelling to explain China's differing strategies in the South and East China Seas in the first two decades of the 21st century. The book concludes by using the lessons from these cases to assess the strategic options available to both states and conditions that make a peaceful resolution more likely.

The military fait accompli is so understudied a phenomenon in the international relations literature that even its definition is not widely known. A fait accompli is a unilateral revision to the status quo in an ongoing dispute over some distribution of benefits. Though recent work has demonstrated that faits accomplis are relatively common events in international history and current international relations, the subject remains undertheorized and empirically underexplored. This dissertation seeks to open up the conversation about faits accomplis in two complementary ways. First, it advances an original formal model of faits accomplis in the shadow of power shifts, interacting the effects of dynamic power on a rising state's decision to use faits accomplis to revise the status quo in an ongoing territorial dispute. Second, it tests the predictions of the theoretical model against the evidence amassed in two cases of territorial disputes, China's maritime territorial disputes with its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, and those with Japan in the East China Sea. The dissertation aims contribute to the international relations literature at three levels of generality: China's security strategies, the security dynamics of East and Southeast Asia, and the growing body of work on faits accomplis in security studies. I offer and apply a coherent structural explanation of China's behavior in the South China Sea while also providing insight into when and where we might expect faits accomplis in other contexts, and under what conditions such faits accomplis may give rise to war.

The receding perennial ice sheets over the polar north have fueled interest in the possibilities for new shipping routes through Arctic waters as well as concern over growing incentives for competition in the region. While these incentives are likely to become more prevalent as Arctic ice continues to melt, to date the existing institutions dedicated to promoting cooperation in the Arctic have largely proven themselves up to the task. We examine four broad developments—increased access to new sea lanes of communication and maritime resources, ongoing disputes over Arctic claims and growing militarization of the Arctic, weakening cohesion in Arctic institutions of governance, and growing extralegal patterns of behavior among Arctic states—which, taken together, challenge the capacity of existing Arctic and maritime institutions to promote cooperation in the region. Each of these trends is troubling in isolation, but when viewed together, their effects show that the behaviors incentivized by an increasingly accessible Arctic have counterintuitively worsened the prospects for cooperation and international commerce in the Far North.

Interstate war has been on the decline since the end of the Second World War. After the Cold War ended without a grand conflagration, civil conflicts and the war on terrorism have appeared to displace interstate war as the most pressing loci of security studies. Interstate aggression has become untenable, some have argued. Cooperative grievance resolution and the powerful incentives of economic interdependence have produced a decline in the outbreak of war. Revered scholars of international security have even asked whether we should bother studying the phenomenon anymore. Intrastate conflicts, it seems, are the order of the day. We argue that the contraction of interstate war is more a function of the weight we have accorded 20th century warfare in our conceptualization of interstate war than a real decrease in states' willingness to employ force to achieve foreign policy ends. A broader approach to interstate war is needed to capture a more consistent conceptualization of the phenomenon. We suggest a framework under which gray zone strategies represent not an emergent phenomenon but a longstanding set of tools within the broader phenomenon of interstate conflict.

This volume brings together international experts to provide fresh perspectives on geopolitical concerns in the South China Sea. The book considers the interests and security strategies of each of the nations with a claim to ownership and jurisdiction in the Sea. Examining contexts including the region's natural resources and China's behaviour, the book also assesses the motivations and approaches of other states in Asia and further afield. This is an accessible, even-handed and comprehensive examination of current and future rivalries and challenges in one of the most strategically important and militarized maritime regions of the world