David A. Andelman, visiting scholar at the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and director of its Red Lines Project, is a contributor to CNN where his columns won the Deadline Club Award for Best Opinion Writing. Author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today," he was formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Asia and Europe, where he learned to love coquilles Saint-Jacques. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The views expressed in this commentary are his own; view more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) Forget territorial waters: Welcome to the Scallop Wars.

How often have I sat in a charming French inn, way out on the rocks of Normandy, and scarfed down a plate full of these delectable bivalve mollusks, sautéed to a golden brown?

And now, sacre bleu, those British fishermen not only want to take themselves out of the European Union, but take French scallops along with them?

Well, that's the long and short of what's turning, depending on which side of the Channel you find yourself, into a war of scallops -- or coquilles Saint-Jacques.

British and French fishing vessels were involved in clashes in the English Channel on Tuesday over a longstanding dispute over scallop fishing regulations.

To simplify it -- if anything involving British and French fishermen can be truly simplified -- it's a matter of just whose fishing boats can take more of these delectable items out of the sea and on to dinner tables.

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