Abstract

The conflicts in the South China Sea have come to dominate debates on Southeast Asian security and specifically on how boundary disputes have been managed within the region. Yet, the case is not nec- essarily exemplary for the way Southeast Asian countries have dealt with territorial disputes generally. The article gathers three common percep- tions about conflict management that are strongly informed by the South China Sea case, but have lesser relevance when looking at other territori- al conflicts in the region. I offer a critical reading of the who, why, and how of territorial conflict management and provide tentative guidelines on what to expect in the future.