Solution Protocols to Festering Island Disputes ― ?n-win' Solutions for the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands

Must the showdown between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea conclude in ’zero-sum’ fashion, with one side securing or wresting full sovereignty, leaving the other empty-handed? This book suggests otherwise. A global review of ingenious solutions to island disputes over the last four hundred years offers hope for creative governance. No less than thirteen different island cases are discussed and critiqued, explaining these episodes as situations where the indivisibility of island sovereignty - where only one country enjoys single, exclusive and legitimate control over the governing of a particular island territory - is challenged, tweaked and warped in creative ways. Six ’solution protocols’ - along with a seventh, the status quo - are identified and discussed: splitting, sharing or suppressing, single sovereignty but also shared jurisdiction, shelving and swapping. Such ingenuity is often an outcome of a keen desire or compulsion to achieve a workable solution that avoids war, that secures desired economic or environmental gains, and that also offers the elusive ’win-win’ solution to the contending parties. Rather than a tense prelude to war, the Diaoyu/Senkaku affair is an opportunity for innovative, trans-border politics.

Godfrey Baldacchino is Professor of Sociology at the University of Malta; Island Studies Teaching Fellow and Designate UNESCO Co-Chair in Island Studies and Sustainability at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada; Visiting Professor of Island Tourism at the University of Corsica France; and President of the International Small Islands Studies Association (ISISA).