A War Over Desolate Asian Islets

Will war break out in the seas of East Asia? After Chinese and Japanese nationalists staged competing occupations of the barren land masses that China refers to as the Diaoyu Islands and Japan calls the Senkaku Islands, demonstrators in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu chanted, “We must kill all Japanese.” Likewise, a standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea led to protests in Manila. And a long-planned step forward in co-operation between South Korea and Japan was torpedoed when the South Korean Prime Minister visited the barren island that Seoul calls Dokdo, Tokyo calls Takeshima, and Washington calls the Liancourt Rocks.