A great deal of international attention has been focused on China's attempts to force tiny South China Sea outcroppings to fit the formal U.N. definition of an island. But few have taken notice of the activities of Japan — a key U.S. ally and potential counterweight to China — at the Okinotori atoll, where Tokyo is making a similarly controversial claim to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). But this maritime dispute carries a great deal of significance. Asia's geopolitics are defined by water, and the status of a particular island, reef or rock can play a crucial role in national strategy — and international conflict.
The atoll, a ring-shaped reef and chain of rocks made of coral, is an odd location for a maritime dispute. It is Japan's southernmost possession, lying 1,000 nautical miles to the south of Tokyo and 860 nautical miles from Taiwan's southernmost point, Eluanbi. Because the atoll had neither habitable land nor notable resources, Japan showed little interest in developing it beyond a short-lived plan to construct a seaplane base there in the late 1930s, left unfinished because of the outbreak of World War II. After the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1973 set the modern standard for EEZs at 200 nautical miles, Japan sought EEZs that would give it the exclusive (and lucrative) right to exploit subsea resources. Thus Japan alleged that the rock outcroppings in the Okinotori atoll were islands entitled to an EEZ amounting to 400,000 square kilometers — an area larger than the entire landmass of Japan.
Since China and Taiwan have a shared interest in insisting that the Okinotori atoll is just a set of uninhabitable rocks and not a territorial entity around which Tokyo can set its EEZ, Okinotori will loom large for Asian politicians and policymakers. On April 25, the Japanese coast guard seized a Taiwanese fishing boat 150 nautical miles off of Okinotori, within the atoll's claimed EEZ. Taiwan responded by dispatching two patrol ships to the area, followed by a Lafayette-class frigate. And while a confrontation between Tokyo and Taipei is unlikely to escalate, the complicated dynamics of Okinotori almost certainly will.
