[Ronin]

China senses a window of opportunity with Obama that would definitely close if a Republican is elected in 2012. Whether they are confident enough about their military expansion to fully exploit it is another question entirely.

The refit of the ex-Varyag in itself is not that significant. The ship’s engines work, but there is no airwing and recent photos have surfaced that indicate they are now installing at least one catapult — which is going to mean at least a couple more months of yard time before they can button her back up and send her out to sea.

My gut feeling is they’re bluffing now. They can squawk and talk, but they don’t “quite” have the weight to do much yet. And hey, bluffing’s cheap.

[tanknetter]

which is going to mean at least a couple more months of yard time before they can button her back up and send her out to sea.

Add to that the fact that, as a nation that has never operated a carrier before, once they do get Varyag "operational"(both the ship and an airwing) it'll take them a decade or two to for them to figure out how to properly run one.

[Ben Ficklin]

US policy on this subject began under Bush and has continued under Obama.

Overlapping claims and disputes are to be pre-negotiated by the interested parties and then submitted to UNCLOS. And, these pre-negotiations would be multi-lateral.

So, in the Arctic, US, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Russia negotiate within the Arctic Council.

Britain, Argentina, and Chile negotiate within the OAS.

The China Sea nations would negotiate within ASEAN and in the recent ASEAN meeting this was a very prominent subject.

China wants to do it bi-laterally with each nation and they already have a bi-lateral agreement with Japan.

In the eastern Mediterranean Sea Israel and Cypress have a bilateral agreement while Turkey and Lebanon are disputing that agreement.