Thresholds: Chinese Maritime Militia and Foreign Direct Investment as Non-Military Coercion in The Malacca Strait

Abstrak

States have long leveraged the ambiguities of international laws and norms in their favor, shaping them and revising them over time. In view of the larger great-power competition and evolution playing out across the Indo-Pacific, and indeed the seas of the 
world, it is especially important to understand the dynamics which shift the currents of power one way or the other.  Australia’s economic integrity, territorial boundaries, and defense needs are inherently intertwined with the security of the surrounding seas. If Canberra, and the Royal Australian Navy, want to preserve the existing rules-based order, it must be proactive in addressing the 
non-military strategies used to shape operational realities in the Indo-Pacific. In building a database to consolidate previously unconnected data, this report proposes that two types of non-military action in the Indo-Pacific-the Belt and Road investment project and the use of civilian vessels as maritime militia-should be viewed as interdependent and purposeful revisionary strategies used by China for its economic and political goals. In tracking this relationship, it lays out the ways in which littoral states are inhibited in their individual and collective responses and recommends cooperative actions to address this going forward. 
By closing the operational-academic gap, communicating with littoral states, and investing in the international legal order, Australia and the United States will be able to deter and counteract the use of non-military coercive strategies in the region and protect their own interests.