Territorial Disputes and Regional Security in the Caribbean Basin

• Author: Raymond J. Milefsky
• Pages: 72-103

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Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror

Territorial Disputes and

Regional Security in the

Caribbean Basin

Raymond J. Milefsky1

There are no intrinsically good or bad boundaries… A boundary, like the

human skin, may have diseases of its own or may reflect the illnesses of the

body.2

Introduction

Land and maritime border disputes represent a traditional threat to

Caribbean security. Such disputes arise from competition over resources:

mainly offshore hydrocarbons and living resources but extend to other natural

and manmade cultural assets, such as coral reefs and shipwrecks. Today,

border disputes affect the region less intensely than domestic instabilities and

transnational criminal activities, but dormant disputes do sometimes re-erupt

in violent conflict. This chapter explains borders boundaries, limits, and

disputes from a Caribbean perspective, comprehensively reviews the status

of all Caribbean boundaries, and provides channels for regional states to

resolve border disputes. For the purposes of this discussion, the Caribbean

basin includes the Gulf of Mexico states, Leeward and Windward Caribbean

islands, Bermuda and the north shore states of South America.

Understanding Land and Maritime Limits and Boundaries

Land Limits and Boundaries

Ancient peoples and some nomads today in sparsely populated regions

identified the limits of their domain by physical features. Occasionally they

built walls to assert those limits. As dominion expanded with the creation of

3

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Territorial Disputes and Regional Security in the Caribbean

armies and navies, limits were extended by conquest and nation-states were

formed. Where the balance of power clashed and limits overlapped, adjacent

states sometimes allied against other states and agreed to establish common

boundaries.

A land boundary affixes the limits of sovereignty of adjacent states with

a two-dimensional perpendicular plane that extends into the air, on the surface

and underground. That plane, represented notionally on maps as a line, can

extend along physical features (peaks, ridges, drainage, streams, etc.),

geometrical configurations (straight lines, arcs) or around and along man-

made features (rail lines and roads, settlements, property lines). A body of

law in the form of treaties evolved to codify and define the alignment and

conditions related to boundaries. In medieval Western Europe, sovereigns

mirrored their early boundary treaties on Roman property law. Today, a

body of international law and practice defines the 322 international land

boundaries that divide up the entire landmass of the planet into independent

states, dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty.3

Land boundaries differ with respect to their legal and political status.

Legally a boundary is either de jure (alignment agreed upon by treaty or

other internationally recognised instrument) or de facto (based on mutually

accepted reality on the ground). Some states maintain historically de jure

boundaries, which means the lines were established during colonial times

but have no formal post-colonial agreement. This situation fortunately does

not exist in the Western Hemisphere. Politically, the majority of international

land boundaries or segments of boundaries are described as either definite or

indefinite. Definite boundaries are usually de jure and are usually clearly

demarcated with pillars or other fixed points on the ground.4 Indefinite

boundaries or certain of its segments, by contrast, may lack current legal

substance, may be delimited but exist undemarcated or poorly defined.

Indefinite segments are still found in sections of remote, unpopulated Brazilian

jungle. The newly-created states of the former Soviet Union and former

Yugoslavia have indefinite boundaries that lack bilateral agreement regarding

their delimitation and demarcation.

A boundary dispute exists when both states cannot agree on the alignment

of the line, its segments, or special arrangements related to navigation, the

transit of local populations and the like along the border. Disputes can occur

among de jure and de facto, definite and indefinite boundaries and result

from changing geography and political realities on the ground: streams shift

courses, valuable mineral resources are discovered, populations resettle, and

– most importantly – governments change.

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Caribbean Security in the Age of Terror

Official maps reflect the foreign policy of states, so disputant states and

third parties may or may not label or depict boundaries in the same way and

employ different names for adjacent features. Cartographers may also label

sections of boundaries as ‘approximate’ when the sources they are using to

compile the map conflict or lack sufficient information to draw the line

correctly. ‘Approximate’ is not a political or legal term. Besides definite and

indefinite international boundaries, ‘other lines of separation’ exist. They

relate to temporal sovereignty divisions, often resulting from unresolved

conflicts or negotiated arrangements, frequently mandated by third parties.

They include armistice lines, ceasefire lines, claim lines, demilitarised zone

lines, ground security zone lines, military disengagement zone lines, military

base lines, peace-keeping zone limits, occupied territory and no-man’s-land

limits, and the like. In the Western Hemisphere, such lines of separation are

presently limited to the:

• Belize-Guatemala Line of Adjacency (an Organization of American

States brokered line of convenience created in 2000 to deal with

Guatemalan squatters in Belize’s rain forests);

• US military base boundary in Guantánamo, Cuba.

Maritime Limits

International limits no longer exist on land,5 but claims to the waters

and seabed extending from the shoreline constitute the largest form of

delimitation at sea. Because limits are unilaterally claimed, other states may

protest these claims but they are to be respected. Several states, for example,

protest Venezuela’s right to claim an exclusive economic zone around Aves

Island as well as Nicaragua’s claimed 200 nautical mile territorial sea.

Before the Second World War, maritime powers asserted territorial limits

seaward out to three nautical miles.6 This was based on the range of standard

eighteenth-century twelve-pounder cannon. After the Second World War,

countries recognised the need to expand their territorial seas for defence as

well as to protect and claim offshore living and mineral resources. Today

most states7 subscribe to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the

Sea (UNCLOS), which sets guidelines for various types of limits:

1) Baselines consist of either straight-line tangents from projecting coastal

features or the coastline itself at a certain tide. Waters behind coastal

and straight baselines are called inland waters and have the same