Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

In 2021, satellite images surfaced depicting the development of a military facility on North Agaléga island, part of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius. It emerged that Indian workers were laying the groundwork for an Indian naval military facility. CSIS in May 2022 released images of hangers on Agaléga, big enough to house India’s […]

This article is part of Evolving Threats to Southeast Asia’s Maritime Security, a series of analyses produced by experts convened by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. How have environmental crimes evolved over the last 20 years? Environmental crime has received less attention than other forms of transnational maritime crimes. Whereas IUU fishing and […]

This article is part of Evolving Threats to Southeast Asia’s Maritime Security, a series of analyses produced by experts convened by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. How has the threat of climate-induced disasters evolved over the last 20 years? Natural hazards originating from the oceans such as tropical storms and tsunamis that are […]

When it comes to maritime boundary disputes, Malaysia is willing to select from a wide range of policy instruments at its disposal: from legal to political negotiation, and from restraint to combative skirmishes at sea. Malaysia can be accommodating, as it was with Indonesia when the two delimited their continental shelves in 1969 based on […]

This article is part of Evolving Threats to Southeast Asia’s Maritime Security, a series of analyses produced by experts convened by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Southeast Asia’s maritime security landscape is steadily evolving. Earlier in 2022, an RSIS study showed that the region’s maritime stakeholders are increasingly aware of their interconnectivity and […]

AMTI analyzed a year’s worth of satellite imagery data across the South China Sea to track the movements of China’s maritime militia.

Shortly after Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assumed the reins of power in the Philippines, an observer forecasted a major foreign policy reboot, which would defy both his populist and liberal predecessors. The working consensus at the time, however, was that the new Filipino president would largely continue former President Rodrigo Duterte’s Beijing-friendly foreign policy. After all, […]

The negotiation for the adoption of a Code of Conduct (COC) for the South China Sea between ASEAN countries and China usually sparks controversies. The necessity of a COC regulating maritime activities in the region was first mentioned in an ASEAN document in 1992 and appeared in a joint declaration of ASEAN and China in […]

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Japan’s nationalization of the Senkaku Islands, when the Japanese government purchased them from a private landowner in an effort to reinforce administrative control and to prevent private groups from visiting. The Chinese response to Japan’s action—which was controversial at the time—sparked a crisis in bilateral relations; although there […]

China has installed a new permanent hydrocarbon platform near the median line with Japan in the East China Sea for the first time since 2015, satellite imagery shows.