The Senkaku paradox: Risking great power war over small stakes

On April 29, Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon and Rachel Martin, co-host of NPR’s Morning Edition, launched O’Hanlon’s latest book, “The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes.”

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[paula]

I'm just here for the legs...and they are spectacular.

[dennislarson]

I'd guess that many have forgotten how close WWIII was during the Cuba Missle Crisis in 1962. Had JFK listened to the Pentagon instead of calling the bluff of the U.S.S.R. Most huge wars start over some very small issue.

[alanboss]

Next option if there gonna fight we should just claim it. Or hold a competition yes I said try a different tactic think outside the box sir.

[jawedz]

Greetings from Japan. The biggest island of the Senkaku Islands had a factory in 1910s. It is wrong to suggest that "it was not certain that if these islands really qualify as islands under the law of the sea". Perhaps he is confusing Takeshima, a big rock, that South Korea has been occupying since late 1940s and has been claimed rightfully IMO by Japan.

These islands's defence is primarily the responsibility of the Japanese Self-Defense force.

The Chinese has a name for the biggest island only AFAIK, which shows their lack of geological knowledge of the Senkaku islands if I am correct. After all, they first made a territorial claim in 1970s!

Their Ming dynasty circa 1600? has left records about the Senkaku islands, journals written by Chinese Emperor's envoys to the kingdom of Ryukyu which is modern day Okinawa prefecture of Japan. I have read an article in Japanese in around 2010-2015 that a professor of Nagasaki University had discovered one of these journals of the Emperor's envoys.

It is commonly assumed by historians that Chinese envoys came to Ryukyu by ships provided by a King of Ryukyu, given that the King was nominally a subordinate of a Chinese Emperor. And these ships were manned by fishermen of southern islands of Ryukyu. These fishermen had been the ones that had used the Senkaku Islands as fishing grounds and safe harbours against a storm for centuries up to 1970s-1980s when China and Taiwan stared to make territorial claims.

The discovered journal showed that an envoy asked about the (Senkaku) islands the ship was passing by. He was told the names of the islands and recorded them.