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In recent years, maritime sovereignty disputes have become highly visible microcosms of broader contests between security orders in East Asia. Escalating tensions over seas provoke questions about how historical and territorial conceptions of sovereignty map onto maritime areas, and the continuing effectiveness of the so‐called "rules‐based order" in maintaining regimes for deciding jurisdiction of islands, rocks and other maritime land features. The paper examines sovereignty claims and the international law of the sea across various cases, including the contested claims over Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu Dao and China's nine‐dash line. These case studies reveal the tensions between two legal regimes: territorial rules of acquisition (sovereignty) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This article concludes by considering the ways that the symbolic nature of these disputes has implications for the capacities of UNCLOS and other legal instruments in the US‐led "rules‐based order" to establish orderly relations among states in the maritime arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Timor's twin experiences of colonialism established its collective identity and internally recognised rights of self-determination. Political boundaries were created through negotiated treaties between Portugal and the Netherlands, and Portuguese colonialism provided East Timor with its status as a non-self-governing territory under international law in 1960. Indonesian colonialism resulted in a discursive battle over identity as both the Indonesian government and East Timor's independence movement employed ethnocultural narratives and myths to persuade the international community of the legitimacy of their respective political claims. During debates over East Timor's political status that occurred between 1975 and 1999, Indonesia emphasised the ethnic ‘kinship’ between Indonesians and East Timorese. In contrast, East Timor's representatives emphasised cultural links with Portugal and Melanesia to prove its distinctiveness from Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]