FISHING BOATS AND GUNBOATS: THE CONVERGENCE OF FISHERIES AND NAVAL POLICY (UNITED STATES, LATIN AMERICA, CHINA, ARGENTINA, PHILIPPINES

Fisheries policy and naval policy have been customarily deemed two discrete policy domains. Each had its own identity and content. After examining four major post-World War Two international fisheries disputes, the common characters of these disputes have been identified: (1) the appearance of strife over contentious national claims of fisheries (maritime) zones; (2) the uses of naval forces and other forms of coercive measures; and (3) the involvement and entanglement of other national interests, i.e., marine-legal position, foreign policy, national prestige, with fisheries interests. The linkage and interaction of national fisheries policymaking and other realms of policymaking, including naval policy, are thus identified and substantiated.; By concentrating on the problems facing the Republic of China, the complexity and intricacy of international fisheries disputes and their interrelated nature are further highlighted. The analysis suggests that, in addition to the nature of these disputes itself, contemporary governmental bureaucracy and its functional division constitute other sources of difficulty for a government to shape a comprehensive view and undertake integrated efforts to manage these disputes. A fisheries diplomacy concept also emerges from this analysis.; This study further suggests that stronger naval power does not always generate favorable outcomes in disputes of this kind and general quantitative approaches to understanding naval power have failed to supply an explanation for it. Meanwhile, traditional naval theory developed from and centering on global navies offers little guidance to the majority of navies in the world--the small navies. A functional analysis of naval power is proposed and employed to identify and understand the nature of small navies. The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has formed a new context in which small navies function and by which the operational scope and the development guidelines of small navies are delimited. A small navy is thus defined as one which is so designed, planned, prepared, and constructed to protect and enforce national rights, as conferred by the 1982 UNCLOS, within the 200-mile limit national (economic) waters.