"We're going to come down to about twice a quarter or a little more than that," said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about navy operational plans.
"That's the right amount to make it regular but not a constant poke in the eye. It meets the intent to regularly exercise our rights under international law and remind the Chinese and others about our view," the official said.
On Monday Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser, said there would be more demonstrations of the US military's commitment to the right to freely navigate in the region.
"That's our interest there … It's to demonstrate that we will uphold the principle of freedom of navigation," Rhodes told an event hosted by the Defense One media outlet.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/02/us-navy-south-china-sea-patrols
Without a doubt, the US must assure its allies in this region and also continue to assert its freedom of navigation rights in order to avoid giving China tacit consent to changing international norms. China is also certainly unhappy about the US' actions, which it perceives as targeted at China, especially since the USS Lassen incident came so shortly after Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US.
Nonetheless, both sides are keen to not let this issue blow up. What we see, therefore, are the US and China walking a very fine line, and engaging in diplomatic signalling, mixed with friendly gestures to manage the situation.
In the months to come, however, China and the US are likely to be forced to adopt a more assertive posture as a result of domestic pressure. The Chinese nationalistic public are already urging officials to be more aggressive in their policies. The US' engagement strategy towards China will also evolve into a heated topic for discussion as the 2016 US presidential campaign gets under way.
http://news.asiaone.com/news/asian-opinions/big-power-game-south-china-sea#sthash.CQe1Tz0j.dpuf
The region's growing strategic interest in India, however, goes beyond the formal praise for Delhi's responsible approach to territorial conflicts and its respect for international rule of law in the Bay of Bengal. The region has welcomed Delhi's expanding interest in South China Sea issues in recent years. The UPA government had begun to raise its voice in favour of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as well as urging Beijing to resolve its territorial disputes peacefully.
Yet there was some concern in the region that Delhi was reluctant to accept a larger role in the South China Sea, given its apparent fears of provoking Beijing. The government of Narendra Modi seems a little less inhibited. In a surprising move in January this year, Prime Minister Modi signed a joint vision statement with US President Barack Obama on the shared security interests in the Indo-Pacific littoral stretching from the east coast of Africa to the South China Sea.
In an explicit reference to China's maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Modi and Obama called on "all parties to avoid the threat or use of force and pursue resolution of territorial and maritime disputes through all peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognised principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea".
James Goldrick, a former rear-admiral in the Royal Australian Navy who is now a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute for International Policy, says Australia must soon follow the US lead by sending a warship into the waters around the reclaimed features.
Payne's strong statement of support for the US is not enough, says Goldrick, and Australia needs to send a warship to pass, even briefly, close to one of the reclaimed Chinese "islands".
Goldrick says while China's claims ultimately could limit nations' freedom to have merchant ships pass through parts of the South China Sea, an important global transit route, it is more accurate to describe the rights sought by the US and its allies as "freedom of naval operations".
That means a warship can use its military equipment, whereas the normal maritime "right of innocent passage" would see it move across another nation's territorial waters by the shortest safe route without launching helicopters or using radar or other such equipment.
No comments:
Post a Comment