Sebastian P. Breit's Blog, page 2

Inspired by the 1942 tragedy in which hundreds of Jews were burned alive in a barn, an event long blamed on Nazi Germany, "Poklosie" ("Aftermath") was directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski. "I wanted to tell a story that would interest a broad number of Poles because it is one of the most painful parts of our country's history," Pasikowski said recently.

"We already have a huge number of films on the horrors committed by the Soviets and the Germans, and it's time to say what bad things we did ourselves." The director said he was inspired by "Neighbours", a book by Polish-origin US historian Jan Tomasz Gross, which sent shock-waves across Poland when it was published in 2000.

Gross shed light on the role of local residents in the massacre in the eastern Polish village, sparking a bitter debate in Poland. According to various historians' estimates, between 340 and 1,500 Jews perished in the massacre. In 2003, a Polish commission of inquiry concluded that the massacre was perpetrated by Jedwabne's Poles, urged on by the Nazi occupiers, rather than by the latter, as long claimed.

Pasikowski said he was also influenced by French director and Holocaust survivor Claude Lanzmann's 1985 work "Shoah", as well as the documentaries of Poland's Pawel Lozinski. His film is set in the 1990s, in the wake of the 1989 fall of Poland's post-war communist regime and shortly before the revelations about Jedwabne. Its message is that covering up the truth of the past can have terrible consequences decades later.

The action takes place in the fictional village of Gorowka -- the site of a war-time massacre -- where present-day residents try to intimidate a man who aims to conserve Jewish tombstones and uncover the past. Pasikowski, already known for his thrillers, stokes the tension until the film's tragic end. "I didn't want to make a film that would be a look back at Jedwabne," he said.

"I made this film as a 'goy' and a Pole," he said, using a Hebrew term for someone who is not Jewish. "As such, I only had the right to make a film about Poles," he added. Polish directing legend Andrzej Wajda has already hailed the work. "This is one of those films that will go down in cinematic history," he told the Polish news channel TVN.

Pasikowski, who scripted the film himself, brought on board cinematographer Pawel Edelman and production designer Allan Starski, both of whom have worked with the likes of Wajda and Roman Polanski.

The unmarked graves of the two Luftwaffe pilots.


A wreath has been laid on the unmarked graves of two German airmen who were shot down over Kent in World War II.

Horst von der Groeben, 24, and Gerhard Muller, 27, were killed on 13 August 1940, during a bombing raid.

The location of their bodies in Whitstable was discovered by Joe Potter of Felixstowe, Suffolk, two months ago.

An oversight after the war meant their bodies were not moved to Cannock Chase German war cemetery in Staffordshire and their whereabouts was forgotten.

Mr. Potter is currently campaigning to have the bodies of the two Luftwaffe 1st Lieutenants exhumed and placed next to their compatriots in Staffordshire.

His efforts have been praised by Canterbury Conservative MP Julian Brazier.

Members of of the Whitstable Royal British Legion placed a wreath on their unmarked graves on Saturday afternoon.

A card attached to the wreath reads: "This wreath was laid in remembrance of all military personnel irrespective of their nationality whose final resting place is in this cemetery.

"This includes the two buried in this unmarked grave: Oblt Horst von der Groeben, Oblt Gerhard Muller. Rest in peace."

The graves of 32 other military personnel are also buried at Whitstable Cemetery.

Donald Bird, vice-president of Whitstable Royal British Legion, said: "Seventy-two years is a long time ago, and I know people still harbour grudges about the Germans, but whether we like it or not we're all Europeans now."

Remembrance ceremonies were held across Kent on Sunday to commemorate service personnel who died in world wars and other conflicts.


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Thank you, Mr. Potter. Unsurprisingly German authorities where nowhere to be found, like in this case, too.

History writes the strangest tales. Edgar Feuchtwanger recalls early memories of seeing Hitler in the street, describing the quixotic notions he had as an 8-yr old being so close to power.

“It all sounds so cosy when I talk about how I lived in the same road as Hitler, like it was not a big deal,” he told the BBC. “But it’s so difficult to think that people you saw almost on a daily basis were responsible for turning the world upside down.”

Feuchtwanger began to incorporate Hitler into his daily routine. He would walk by his residence in the hopes of spotting him, and once even approached the door to see if he could spot his name on the door-bell.

Other Jewish families were moved out of the neighborhood on Hitler’s orders but for several years Feuchtwanger’s family was undisturbed.

But, as the BBC article explains: on November 10, 1938 that false sense of security was crushed. Early in the morning, the 14-year-old Edgar heard officers from the feared Gestapo arrive at the family home. The previous night had seen the first wave of organised Nazi violence directed against Jews across Germany and parts of occupied Austria.


Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass, changed Feuchtwanger’s world forever. The Gestapo arrested Feuchtwanger’s father, who was taken away to Dachau. “They did not mistreat him,” he told the BBC. “My mother was terribly brave.” Feuchtwanger’s father was fortunate. He returned from Dachau six weeks later and in 1939 the family fled to England.

Ulrich Tukur as F.M. Erwin Rommel.


Was Germany's Second World War general, Erwin Rommel, really the chivalrous "Desert Fox" commander of legend who is reputed to have plotted against Hitler? Or was he a deeply convinced Nazi and anti-Semite driven by an egotistical desire for fame?

German viewers will get an opportunity to make up their own minds on Thursday evening when Rommel, a controversial television drama about the celebrated wartime general, will be broadcast. The production has infuriated the surviving relatives of the general who committed suicide in 1944. Its authors stand accused of relying on the works of the discredited Holocaust-denying British historian David Irving. A German historian involved walked out in disgust.

Manfred Rommel, the late general and subsequent field marshal's 83-year-old son has protested that the film's portrayal of his father as a favourite of Hitler and a war criminal is untrue. "These are lies," the Rommel family wrote to the film-makers.

Churchill once described Rommel as a "great general" and in reunified post-war Germany, the field marshal is still largely remembered as one of the few "decent" military commanders to have served the Nazi regime. Because of his initial spectacular successes in the desert campaign against the British, Rommel became a favourite of Hitler.

Nico Hofmann, the film's producer, told Der Spiegel magazine: "We have carried out the demystification of Rommel... We have deliberately distanced ourselves from all the clichés. In our film he is not the victorious and noble 'Desert Fox' who was even respected by the British."


* * *




Now, I don't believe for a second that, from an artistic point of view, this will not be a compelling film. Ulrich Tukur, especially, is an amazing character actor who is probably among the few actors who can successfully portray a complex historical personality like Rommel. That being said I am monumentally pissed at this continued desire to "deconstruct" things. Would it be that hard to let a man who was generally respected by his enemies and by his own soldiers stand as that? What is it with these 1968er-influenced people being so hellbent on destroying the last positive vestiges of this dark part of history that they even enlist the help and expertise of people like holocaust-denier David Irving. I think that's a new low, even for that bunch!

Well, some days you feel like pigs just started to fly. This might just be such a day because there's not a single word I'd disagree with in Shepard Smith's rant.

Multiple "Hugo"-Award Winner Ben Bova


Fellow author Ben Bova has an article up about Alternate History over at Naples Daily News. Here are a few choice parts.

It's a subgenre of science fiction where the author changes some
turning point in history and we see what might have unfolded. Instead of
the history we know, we get a story about a history that might have
been.




For example, what would have happened if Robert E. Lee had won the
battle of Gettysburg? Or if Hitler had never been born? How would our
world of today be different if the Roman Empire had not collapsed? Or if
the Wright brothers had given up on their dream of making an airplane?


What would things be like if that asteroid missed the Earth 65 million years ago and the dinosaurs never went extinct?

That's the stuff of alternate history.

He's also got a few novels out there that may be of interest to you, for example The Café Coup.

There are lots of stories about how the world would be different if
Germany had won World War II. I decided to write a tale in which Germany
won the First World War. It's set in Paris the year after the war
ended, and it's titled "The Café Coup."


The point at which the historical background of my story diverges
from actual history is this: the United States did not enter World War
I. We remained neutral and Germany defeated Russia, France and Britain.


I reasoned that if Germany had been victorious in World War I, Hitler
could never have risen to power on his promise to avenge Germany's
defeat.


No Hitler, no Nazi tyranny, no World War II. Really? What about the
humiliated feelings of the French people and their thirst for revenge?
Would they rally around a charismatic leader? Perhaps Charles de Gaulle?

Given the immense disparity is power between a victorious Germany and a beaten France after World War One had been fought to its bitter end no amount of desire for revenge would have sufficed to turn France back into a successful continental opponent, especially with Brest-Litovsk and the German-sponsored buffer state system in the east. But it is an interesting premise nonetheless. Make sure to read the whole piece.

The Suez Campaign


Fifty-six years ago a diplomatic and military crisis of the first order began on Oct. 29, 1956 when Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt, thus beginning the Suez Crisis.

First opened in November 1869, the Suez Canal in Egypt dramatically expanded world trade and the British soon dubbed it the “Highway to India.” Though open to ships from all nations, the Convention of Constantinople in 1888 confirmed Britain's control over the canal. The canal soon became a critical supply line of the British empire, significantly shortening travel time to the Indian Ocean, and was heavily defended during both World Wars. During the Second World War, German General Erwin Rommel's North Africa campaign was fought largely to deny the British this supply line.

When in the 1950s Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser appeared to draw too close to the Soviet bloc by recognizing Communist China and accepting arms from the Soviet Union, relations with the West degenerated. Nasser's pet project, the Aswan Dam, was meant to provide electricity for Egyptian cities and became a symbol of Egyptian industrialization. Though both the United States and Britain had originally agreed to fund the dam, Nasser's foreign policy cooled Western interest in the project.

Acting on advice from his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower canceled American participation in the project and the British did the same a few days later. In violation of agreements he had signed only a few years earlier, the next week, on July 26, 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, the agency through which the British maintained control over the canal.

Nasser's action was met with cheering crowds and soaring popularity in Egypt, but in London the nationalization of the canal was totally unacceptable. Eisenhower was sympathetic to the Egyptian move, stating, “Egypt was within its rights and until its operation of the Canal proves incompetent, there is nothing we can do.”

With the diplomatic crisis at a deadlock, Britain, France and Israel set a plan in motion. Though not carefully coordinated to maintain plausible deniabilty, Israel would attack Egypt, beginning a new Arab-Israeli war. Then Britain and France could move military assets into the canal zone to maintain order. Britain would gain control of the canal, France would warn Nasser against supporting its enemies and Israel would deal a blow to Egypt’s military might.

The next day, the British and French issued a public warning for each side to back down, though this only provided the pretext for the next move. On Nov. 5, British and French paratroops dropped into the canal zone and the next day saw the beginning of their seaborne invasion.

Eisenhower, who had been kept in the dark about what his NATO allies were up to, was livid. Speaking at a Republican rally in Philadelphia on Nov. 1, Eisenhower said: “We cannot and will not condone armed aggression — no matter who the attacker, and no matter who the victim. We cannot — in the world, any more than in our nation — subscribe to one law for the weak, another law for the strong; one law for those opposing us, another for those allied with us.”

Then, compounding Eisenhower's fury, events in Eastern Europe exploded.

The fighting in Egypt was upstaged early on Sunday, November 4, when Eisenhower learned that the Soviet Union had intervened with a massive military force to snuff out Hungary's brief experiment in democracy

Eisenhower recognized how hypocritical it was for the leader of the Western world to criticize the Soviets on their heavy-handedness in Hungary even as Britain and France had invaded Egypt. Eisenhower demanded that British Prime Minister Anthony Eden agree to a cease-fire and begin to pull out of Egypt. When Eden equivocated, Eisenhower said bluntly, “If you don't get out of Port Said tomorrow, I'll cause a run on the pound and drive it down to zero.”


With the United States actively hostile to its aims, Britain and its allies signed the cease-fire on Nov. 6, the same day that Eisenhower won his second presidential election. Eisenhower's tough stand during the crisis did much to convince voters that he was much better suited to international affairs than his Democratic rival, Adlai Stevenson. British and French units were required to be out of Egypt by mid-December.

The Suez Crisis is seen as Britain's last great attempt at imperialism. It ended in a loss of prestige for Great Britain and the resignation of Eden. Within a few years France would lose Algeria to the rebels, and Israel would face an increasingly militant, hostile and humiliated Egypt.

Ultimately, the UN placed the canal under the Suez Canal Authority of Egypt, which agreed to pay off the shareholders of the Suez Canal Company and maintain a neutral right of passage for all ships.

...by staging naval exercises in the middle of the whole islands controversy they've got going with Japan.

From Bloomberg.

China’s navy will conduct exercises in the East China Sea to better coordinate missions to protect Chinese territory, Xinhua News Agency said, a move that may heighten tensions with Japan over disputed islands.

Today’s exercises with the fishery administration and the marine surveillance agency will involve 11 ships and eight aircraft, Xinhua reported yesterday, citing a statement from the navy’s Donghai fleet.

“When carrying out missions in disputed waters, patrol vessels of the fishery administration and marine surveillance agency have been stalked, harassed and even intentionally interfered with by foreign vessels, greatly challenging their duties,” Xinhua said, citing the statement.

The exercises may further strain China’s relationship with Japan in the aftermath of Chinese protests that flared last month when Japan bought islands claimed by both sides from their private owner. The dispute over the area, which is rich in gas, oil and fish, has damaged trade ties worth $340 billion.

“I’m aware of the reports,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters today in Tokyo. “The government does not have any details of the actual content of the exercises, so I will refrain from commenting further. In any case there is no change to our basic stance of continuing to pay close attention to China’s moves.”

The drill is aimed at improving emergency response in missions to “safeguard territorial sovereignty and maritime interests,” according to the statement. It says the navy has conducted “several” exercises with the fishery administration and surveillance agency in the past.

Xinhua’s announcement of the exercises came a day after the news agency issued a commentary saying that Japanese opposition leader Shinzo Abe’s visit to a shrine honoring Japan’s war dead Oct. 17 was a provocative act that “would further poison bilateral ties.” It said the visit comes at a “delicate moment” and “added insult to injury.”

China protested again yesterday after two Japanese Cabinet ministers also visited the Yasukuni shrine, where men convicted of war crimes are among those honored. Yasukuni is viewed in China and Korea as a symbol of Japan’s military atrocities during its occupation of Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

Fujimura yesterday said the government had no further comment on the visits because the ministers went in a “private capacity.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a briefing in Beijing yesterday that Japan should “face the international community in a responsible manner.”

China maintains that it’s owned the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, for centuries. Japan argues it took control of them in 1895, lost authority after World War II, and had them returned by the U.S. in 1972.

Do you smell that? It's the smell of escalation.

Indian soldiers in the Himalaya



Mao ordered 1962 war to regain CPC control

China's late strongman Mao Zedong had launched the 1962 war with India to regain control of the ruling Communist Party after the debacle of his 'Great Leap Forward' movement in which millions had perished.

This was stated by top Chinese strategist Wang Jisi, adding a new dimension to the conflict ahead of the 50th anniversary of the war on Saturday.

"The war was a tragedy. It was not necessary," Wang, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told PTI here.

Wang said he differed with the perception of many Chinese political and strategic analysts that the Chinese victory ended India's claims on the border and brought about long-term peace.

"I think we need to do some research. One anecdotal story I heard was because of Mao's own fear of his position in China in 1962 that he launched a war," said Wang, who according to senior Indian diplomats was often consulted by the Chinese leadership.

"In 1962, three years after the Great Leap Forward (GLF), Mao lost power and authority. He was no longer the head of the state and he went back to the so-called second line. The explanation given to us at that time was that he was more interested in ... Revolution and so on," he said ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Sino-India conflict on October 20.

GLF was a mass campaign launched by Mao to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy to a modern Communist society.

The movement turned out to be a catastrophe for China as millions of people perished in violent purges weakening Mao's position as supreme leader of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and he was sidelined.

"Naturally he (Mao) lost control of number of practical issues. So he wanted to testify and show he was still in power, especially of the military. So he called the commander in Tibet and asked Zhang are you confident you can win the war with India?" Wang said.

The name Zhang referred to Zhang Guohua, the then PLA commander of the Tibet Regiment.

"The Commander said, 'Yes Mao, we can easily win the war'. Mao said 'go ahead and do that'. The purpose was to show that he was personally in control of the military. So it had little to do with territorial dispute, (may be) something to do with Tibet but not necessarily," according to Wang, who was also associated with the Institute of International Strategic Studies of Party School of the CPC.

A war China won only to lose

This month marks the 50th anniversary of China’s attack on India, the only war Communist China has won despite involvement in multiple military conflicts since 1950. Its decisive victory over India, however, failed to end bilateral disputes, with the war’s legacy continuing to weigh down the relationship. In fact, as military tensions rise and border incidents increase, the relationship risks coming full circle.

The vast Tibetan plateau separated the Indian and Chinese civilizations throughout history, limiting their interaction to sporadic cultural and religious contacts, with political relations absent. It was only after Tibet’s 1950-51 annexation that Han Chinese troops appeared for the first time on India’s Himalayan frontiers.

Just over a decade later, China caught India’s undermanned and ill-equipped army napping by launching a surprise, multi-pronged military attack across the Himalayas on 20 October 1962. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai publicly said the war was intended “to teach India a lesson”.

The invasion inflicted such immense psychological-political shock on India as to greatly magnify the initial military advances by the Chinese. Taking an enemy by surprise does confer a major tactical advantage in war. The shock value of China’s blitzkrieg created gloom and a defeatist mindset in India, and forced its army to retreat to very defensive positions. India even shied away from employing its air power for fear of unknown consequences, although the Chinese military lacked effective air cover for its advancing forces.

After 32 days of fighting, China triumphantly declared a unilateral ceasefire from 21 November, even as its forces continued to fire upon the outflanked Indian troops in the eastern sector. It simultaneously announced that its forces would begin withdrawing from 1 December, vacating their territorial gains in the eastern sector but retaining the area seized in the western sector. These withdrawal parameters meshed with China’s pre-war claims.

Just as Mao Zedong had started his invasion of Tibet while the world was preoccupied with the Korean War, he chose a perfect time for invading India, in the style recommended by the ancient strategist Sun Tzu. The attack coincided with a major international crisis that brought the US and the Soviet Union within a whisker of nuclear war over the stealthy deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. China’s unilateral ceasefire, significantly, coincided with the US’s formal termination of Cuba’s quarantine, marking an end to the Cuban missile crisis. The good timing ensured the isolation of India from sources of international support. Right through the Chinese invasion of India, the international spotlight was on the potential US-Soviet nuclear showdown, not on the bloody war raging in the Himalayan foothills.

Half a century later, tensions between India and China are rising again. Little progress has been made on settling the territorial disputes despite regular border-related talks since 1981. These talks constitute the longest and most-futile negotiating process between any two nations in modern world history. During a 2010 New Delhi visit, Premier Wen Jiabao bluntly stated that sorting out the border disputes “will take a fairly long period of time”. If so, what does China (or India) gain by carrying on with the negotiations?

As old rifts fester, new issues have started roiling bilateral relations. For example, since 2006 China has raised a new territorial dispute by claiming the eastern sector from where its forces withdrew in 1962. The Chinese practice of describing the Austria-size Arunachal Pradesh (which constitutes the eastern sector) as “Southern Tibet” started only in 2006. A perceptible hardening of China’s stance towards India since then is also manifest from other developments, including Chinese strategic projects and military presence in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strategic rivalry between the world’s largest autocracy and democracy has also sharpened despite their fast-rising trade. Between 2000 and 2010, bilateral trade rose 20-fold, making it the only area where relations have thrived. Far from helping to turn the page on old disputes, this commerce has been accompanied by greater Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry and military tensions. This shows that booming trade is no guarantee of moderation or restraint between countries.

Although in 1962 China set out to teach India a “lesson”, the real lesson that can be drawn today is that the war failed to achieve any lasting political objectives for Beijing and only fuelled enduring enmity with India. The same lesson for Beijing is applicable vis-à-vis Hanoi: In 1979, China replicated the 1962 model by launching a surprise blitzkrieg against Vietnam that Deng Xiaoping admitted was designed to “teach a lesson”. After 29 days, China ended its invasion and withdrew, claiming Vietnam had been sufficiently chastised, although the war-hardened Vietnamese gave the invaders a bloody nose.

For India, the haunting lesson of 1962 is that to secure peace, it must be ever ready to defend peace. China’s recidivist policies are at the root of the current bilateral tensions and carry the risk that Beijing may be tempted to teach India “a second lesson”, especially because the political gains of the first lesson have been frittered away. Chinese strategic doctrine attaches great value to the elements of surprise and good timing in order to wage “battles with swift outcomes” (sujue zhan). If China were to unleash another surprise war, victory or defeat will be determined by one key factor: India’s ability to withstand the initial shock and awe and fight back determinedly.

Small and occupied largely by seabirds, goats and a unique indigenous species of mole, the islands named Senaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China have long been largely ignored.

But as rising powers face off against each other in a battle not just for influence but also vital resources, such disputed islets, reefs, and areas of seabed are swiftly growing in importance; and not just in Asia.

From the melting and resource-rich Arctic to the eastern Mediterranean, the South Atlantic to the East China Sea, legal wrangling, diplomatic posturing and military saber rattling are all on the rise.

The current row between Beijing and Tokyo over five islets and three rocks seems one of the riskiest so far, putting two of Asia's most powerful states at loggerheads - although most experts believe talk of outright war is overstated for now.

"Some of these lines have always been disputed," says Admiral Gary Roughead, a former US Pacific Fleet commander who retired as Navy Chief of Operations last year and is now Annenberg distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute.

"But the resource issue is giving them much greater edge. You have energy reserves, you have fish stocks - which are particularly essential to the Asian diet and which I think we too often ignore - and increasingly you are going to have interest in undersea minerals and rare earths."

What began as a purely diplomatic row when Japan's government bought land on the islands from their private owner has escalated to so far bloodless confrontations between patrol boats and fishing craft. Last week, Taiwan - which also claims the islands and with them hundreds of square sea miles believed to contain considerable gas and oil - entered the fray as its own patrol craft and fishing boats entered the waters.

"You have profound geopolitical shifts... that are making certain states much more politically, economically and militarily more assertive. Then, you have new technologies that are putting resources within reach that would have been either unknown or impossible to access only a few years ago."

Not all states resort to direct action. Later this year, Chile and Peru will go to the International Court of Justice to determine the exact location of their maritime boundary while Bangladesh and Myanmar went through a similar process at the Hamburg-based tribunal that arbitrates the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Argentina might be raising its rhetoric once again over what it calls the Malvinas and Britain calls the Falklands, but most diplomats believe it plans a diplomatic campaign rather than the kind of direct assault they launched in 1982.

But in a growing number of cases, fishing boats, oil and gas exploration vessels and sometimes aircraft and warships find themselves in increasing if so far largely bloodless confrontation.

Even areas so far unaffected, such as Africa's coastal waters, could soon also see mounting disputes as oil and gas finds pit neighboring nations against each other.

"Launching land wars to seize resources is no longer seen as acceptable," says Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College. "But a grab for resources at sea may be a different matter."

On a map of the eastern Mediterranean, CNA strategy expert Thompson sketched out a block in the waters between Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Lebanon - the sight of a potentially huge gas find first identified in 2009.

"It's enough to meet almost the entire world's energy requirements for almost a year," he told Reuters on a visit to the Centre for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia earlier this year. "How much is disputed? Pretty much all of it."

Last year, both Turkey and the government of Cyprus sent warships out alongside exploration vessels, ratcheting up tensions that had been easing since a 1974 war left Cyprus divided. Already increasingly asserting itself as a Mediterranean power, Turkey has made it clear it backs claims by the Turkish Cypriot enclave that occupies the island's north.

Rivalry over gas looks to have further complicated the already increasingly acerbic relationship between one-time allies Turkey and Israel. Defense sources say the two countries' jets now periodically face off over the contested waters, although some believe all sides have been more restrained this year in part by preoccupation with events in nearby Syria.

Even if such conflicts never spark open warfare, analysts say they can fuel wider regional tensions, arms races and potentially raise the risk of wars over other issues.

That could be amongst the greatest danger from China's grandiose maritime claims, which have put it at loggerheads with almost every other regional power. While Beijing has become more assertive, foreign officials and other observers say other Asian states are following suit.

Japan's focus on its territorial dispute, for example, is seen suggesting a very different approach to foreign policy than that usually followed by Tokyo since 1945.

The most complex of China's disputes, over the oil-rich Spratly Islands, also wraps in the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. All have stepped up sea and air patrols as well as garrisoning isolated atolls and floating patrol bases.

Senior officials make it clear Washington would rather not be dragged in. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert told reporters on Thursday that China and Japan needed to work out their differences on their own.

"We've been very clear that these bilateral disagreements have to be worked out with the countries involved," Greenert said after a speech to the Association of the U.S. Navy.

But the U.S. might struggle to stay on the sidelines, particularly given its alliances with Japan and other regional powers - almost all with disputes with China.

"By the very nature of our global presence, we are going to end up becoming involved," Greenert's predecessor Roughead told Reuters. "We are going to need to use our influence to push for peaceful solutions. But there are going to be challenges."

The irony, resorts experts say, is that for companies to be willing to exploit the riches under the sea they will almost invariably require disputes resolved and conflict risks gone.

But in times of economic headwinds, nationalistic rhetoric and posturing can seem an appealing distraction. Certainly, those trying to resolve such issues say it is getting harder.

"The higher the stakes, the more difficult it is," says Lawrence Martin, a Washington DC-based maritime lawyer advising governments at law firm Foley Hoag.

"Some of the states have domestic politics that makes it very difficult to back down."

In principle, any such dispute should be arbitrated under the UN Convention UNCLOS, introduced in 1982 and ratified by most countries. The United States, however, has never signed, despite pleas by a succession of presidents, secretaries of state and defense and military chiefs to overcome objections from Congress where some members see it as overly restrictive.

The paradox, US experts in particular say, is that Washington has tended to follow the convention almost to the letter when making its own claims, while several states who have ratified it - most notably China - appeared to ignore it.

"What we are seeing with these disputes is something we see in a lot of other areas as well," says Jonathan Wood, global issues analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks. "It's increasingly rare to have global consensus on how to manage difficult issues. And when you think of how a single YouTube video can stir up demonstrations and riots, you can never guarantee these things will not get out of control."