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- Lancome / rll the borders of countries
on the map are well complicated I've
already made three videos about the
world's strangest borders but these
borders are all clearly visible on maps
because well they're on land today
though we're talking about the system of
international borders on the water and
they're actually even more wild than the
ones on land are you see on the land
there's usually ways to clearly mark a
border as belonging to your country city
or civilization rivers mountains lakes
and peninsulas all make clean and
orderly orders but the ocean on the
other hand is just an empty flat
wasteland with nothing to really
distinguish one area from another at the
surface and therefore different people
have different ideas about what part of
the ocean belongs to them the most
agreed-upon system for territorial
rights the ocean was established back in
1982 by the United Nations Convention on
the law of the sea this gave every
country in the world with a coastline a
zone of Ocean Territory called an
exclusive economic zone or EEZ for short
every country's EEZ stretches out to 200
nautical miles away from their coastline
and each country has certain exclusive
and economic rights within their zones
to harvest resources like fish oil or
gas this is a map of every country's etz
in the world and there's a lot of pretty
weird things to digest here first of all
the parts of the ocean outside of any
EEZ are considered international waters
they don't belong to any country's legal
jurisdiction and laws are generally
enforced by local street justice ships
sailing in international waters are
bound by the laws of the country's flag
that they fly if any and ships involved
in piracy out here can get dished out
justice by literally anybody who happens
to pass them by
however the easies themselves have some
pretty quirky borders the United Kingdom
for example continues to maintain an
extensive maritime empire that's
invisible on most maps Britannia still
rules a decent chunk of waves in the
Atlantic without posts than the Pacific
and Indian Oceans owing to her few
remaining island colonies but since the
law for a Easy's stretches
to 200 nautical miles away from a coast
the UK maritime Empire is still alive
and well but not so alive and well as
the Empire that France continues to
possess in a juicy historical irony
France possesses the most extensive
maritime empire in the world today and
controls the world's largest EEZ with
huge blobs in the Pacific pretty big
blobs in the Indian Ocean and outposts
in the Atlantic
Frances extensive overseas islands and
territories ensure this and the French
eec is so large an overall territory
that it's even larger than the entire
country of Canada when it's all combined
in fact eight percent of all the EEZ
territory in the world is under French
administration despite only 0.45 percent
of Earth's land territory being under
French control that pesky 200 nautical
mile limit from a coastline though has
set up some pretty weird situations
elsewhere though particularly in Russia
here in the Sea of Okhotsk
the entire sea is surrounded by Russian
territory on all sides so most of it
does fall within the 200 nautical mile
range of the Russian EEZ except for this
little hole in the middle here that's
just out of that range from any
direction this little hole is called the
peanut hole and technically it would
fall under the classification of
international waters which has plagued
Russia with problems this legal
technicality was apparently discovered
by other countries in the 1990s who
realized that they could just show up
there and legally plunder everything
without any consequences
a fleet of 39 Polish super trawlers
sailed around the world just to raid the
area for fish and not wanting to miss
out on an opportunity for free loot the
entire Chinese commercial fishing fleet
soon came barging in as well the peanut
hole was eventually full of hundreds of
fishing ships that weren't at all
Russian it was full of Polish Chinese
Korean Japanese Bulgarian Ukrainian and
even Panamanian fishing fleets and all
of the business was severely depleting
fish in the entire sea
fish obviously swim wherever they want
in and out of different parts of the
ocean and the non Russian fleets didn't
really care about how many fish they
caught because it was only depleting the
Russian sea and not their own nearby
water understandably Russia was pretty
pissed off about the entire situation
and petitioned the UN for a loophole in
the EEZ law you see a country can extend
their EEZ beyond that 200 nautical mile
limits if they can legally prove that
the area was an extension of their
continental shelf or the part of a
continent that's underwater Russia
managed to successfully get the UN to
recognize the peanut hole as being a
part of their continental shelf and in
March 2014 the Russian EEZ was legally
extended to cover it and the age of
foreign fishing raiding parties came to
an end but that's not the only part of
the system that people have ever
disagreed on China has a well a rather
optimistic view of their own easy this
is the technical legal easy the China
was ascribed under UN law but this is
the EEZ that China asserts that it
actually has for clarification both the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China on the island of
Taiwan claim the exact same optimistic
EEZ orders so because of this both China
and Taiwan run into a direct border
conflict with Japan over the Senkaku
Islands they're claimed a Easy's all
intersect over the islands which are
uninhabited and they all three claimed
ownership over them anyway Japan claims
that they discovered the islands like
they are now uninhabited in the 19th
century and claimed them under
international law whereas both China and
Taiwan assert the islands as an imperial
age Japanese conquest that has never
been properly returned to them but this
conflict is pretty straightforward and
simple when compared to the train wreck
of the South China Sea six countries all
have wildly competing claims here that
are literally at odds with everybody
else this is the claimed EEZ of Brunei
which seems fairly reasonable and here
is the claimed EEZ of Malaysia which
also seems pretty moderate but it does
conflict with Brunei but here is the
claimed EEZ of the Philippines which
conflicts with both Brunei
and Malaysia and here is the claim EEZ
of Vietnam which conflicts with Brunei
Malaysia and the Philippines but the
most ambitious by far are the claimed EE
Z's in the area of both the People's
Republic of China and Taiwan which are
identical and massively conflict with
everybody at the center of these
territorial border claims are the
Spratly Islands which all six countries
lay claim to at least a part of China
Taiwan Vietnam Malaysia and the
Philippines have all set up military
bases and personnel on the islands to
enforce their claims and threats of war
have been made in the past
China has even resulted to constructing
artificial islands complete with air
bases in the area to further project
their own claims but why does everybody
here care so much about a bunch of tiny
rocky islands first the economic answer
the sea is not only an extremely rich
fishing area but it's also likely home
to extensive undiscovered crude oil and
natural gas reserves that can only be
legally exploited by a country if
they're easy stretches out to cover it
therefore everybody that orders it wants
a piece of the Spratlys so that their et
Cie can cover more potential resources
there and the second answer is
geopolitical the South China Sea
is one of the most important shipping
routes in the entire world one-third of
all global maritime trade passes through
the sea every single year 39 point five
percent of all of China's imports passes
through the sea as well which includes
an overwhelming 80 percent of all of
China's energy imports if China lost
sovereignty and control over the area
the flow of trade into reports could
become severely compromised trade ships
sailing from South Asia Africa and
Europe would have to take a much longer
and much more expensive route to get
into China and China's economy would
inevitably suffer therefore it is an
imperative Chinese foreign policy goal
to secure the area and make sure that
the spice continues to flow since Taiwan
also claims to be the sole government of
China they make the exact same foreign
policy claims as the mainland does so
they're easy claims directly overlap
with one another so borders are
complicated and while they're supposed
to be defensive and
sure maritime borders are difficult to
enforce and worse still if you have a
hole in your borders like Russia did
then everybody who knows about it can
just show up and steal all of your stuff
it was basically a hole in their
security system and unfortunately for
them they could have just solve it by
slapping a password over to block out
intruders fortunately for you and your
security defense though passwords
generally work just fine and stopping
raiding parties but they can be pretty
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