This report examines the persistent challenges of Taiwan in protecting submarine cables, particularly in the context of perceived gray zone activities. Despite numerous policy initiatives from both domestic and international experts, key limitations continue to limit effective prevention, enforcement, and attribution.
Report Background and Core Focus
The inevitable inter-agency coordination within submarine cable damage notification and enforcement procedures, and the narrow time window for prevention it caused, may not be addressed by existing advanced technologies. In addition, the international norms generally limit coastal states’ jurisdiction within their territorial waters and provide few unilateral options to hold offending vessels accountable in international waters. Lastly, the intelligence currently available regarding gray zone activities overall fails to meet the threshold required for attribution, and thus further hinders response efforts and risk policy legitimacy. Despite the heightened awareness among the policymakers, these constraints prevent the relevant governmental agencies from delivering. This report stresses that the key to countering gray zone activities lies in legitimacy. In addition to enforcement capability, identifying and addressing the gray zone activities through norms is essential to international cooperation and the rule-based international order.
Three Key Policy Directions
In light of the identified constraints, this report proposes three policy tracks to address submarine cable damage on the premise of perceived gray zone activities: punish, offset, and address. These tracks reflect different policy decisions, and each comes with trade-offs, risks, and different levels of dependencies on certain factors such as intelligence, consensus among the international community, and key national interests such as freedom of navigation and sovereignty.
First, regarding “punishment,” policymakers must first obtain concrete intelligence to establish both the factual and legal attribution of the vessels involved to the gray zone actor state. Policymakers may then invoke countermeasures under customary international law to prevail over the existing limits on coastal state jurisdiction beyond the territorial sea under international law, and exercise unilateral jurisdiction over the vessels involved.
Second, regarding “offset,” when constrained by limited intelligence and international norms, policymakers should inventory feasible unilateral policy measures or coordinate with allies in shared international forums to impose higher regulatory burdens on the gray zone actor state (for example, stricter port state measures, cooperation through the IMO, etc.), ultimately offsetting the intended political gains of the gray zone actor state.
Finally, regarding “address,” policymakers should draw on contemporary models of international coordination over the flag state’s exclusive jurisdiction in international waters. Policymakers should first hold the flags of convenience accountable for the vessels involved, and through international coordination, request these flag states to propose proper regulation and punishment for submarine cable damages agreed upon by the international coordination. These international coordinations should also aim to acquire prior consent from these flag states to allow the member states of the international coordination to exercise jurisdiction and conduct investigations over the vessels involved in cases involving submarine cable damage. Under this policy track, policymakers should work with allies to gradually secure the prior consent of most of the relevant flags of convenience states in cases of submarine cable damage, ultimately reducing the room for maneuver for the gray zone actor states.
This report provides possible starting points under the contemporary international norms for policymakers to develop their strategies. Policymakers can adjust and refine the direction of their policies based on their assessments and the priority of each factor, in order to establish proactive and feasible strategies.
