Manila Wins South China Sea Arbitration Case at The Hague
....."What Now?
Sam Tangredi, a specialist on anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies at the US-based consulting firm Strategic Insight, argues that China's A2/AD ambitions must be defined in terms of diplomatic and economic activities, not just military.
China could ignore the ruling and justify its activities by passing a law declaring that the South China Sea, like Taiwan, has always been an internal region of China, and therefore international legal jurisdiction does not and has never existed, Tangredi said. In that line of thinking, the independence or foreign control of the territorial seas cannot be tolerated and actions by other states to assert control are illegal and will be treated as a criminal action. Any resulting resistance or attack on Chinese agencies exercising outside legal authority would be treated as an attack against the state.
Tangredi, who wrote the recent book, “Anti-Access Warfare,” said: “Authoritarian regimes are particularly sensitive to having ‘legal’ justifications for arbitrary actions, and that is the case with China.”
The analyst also said he fears China would declare an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea in response to the court ruling. China declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea (ECS) in November 2013, rattling Japan and the United States. The ECS ADIZ overlaps the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which China claims as the Diaoyu Islands."...........