South China Sea Statement: U.S. Guided Missile Destroyer Within 12 Miles Of China-Dredged Reef

The United States has made a South China Sea statement by sending a warship within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, an artificial island created by China off the western coast of the Philippines. The move demonstrates the U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation on international waters threatened by Chinese reclamation of some 3,000 acres of dredged land in the contested sea.

Xinhua-based CRI English called the warship deployment “provocative behaviour” violating the non-confrontational commitment by Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama during Xi’s state visit to the U.S. on September 24-25, 2015. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also described the U.S. South China Sea involvement as “provocative” and threatened a commensurate response, according to USNI News. The ministry issued the following statement.

“China will resolutely respond to any country’s deliberate provocations. The actions of the U.S. warship have threatened China’s sovereignty and security interests, jeopardized the safety of personnel and facilities on the reefs, and damaged regional peace and stability.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. usually takes the neutral path in territorial disputes, but when it comes to international waters where $5 trillion of ship-borne commerce goes through every year, the U.S. navy must intervene. In the previous year, the U.S. navy challenged 19 maritime claims threatening such friendly pacific nations as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

The warship dispatched to reconnoiter the South China Sea is U.S.S. Lassen, a Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer in the United States Navy. Formerly docked at the San Diego naval facility, Lassen was relocated in 2005 to Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, from which the warship was sent to make a statement.

Before Lassen’s latest assignment, guided missile destroyer U.S.S. Fitzgerald staged naval maneuvers no more than 50 miles from a Filipino shoal position within sight of Chinese naval ships in the South China Sea, to demonstrate U.S. commitment to its alliance with the Philippines. In a related development, Japan’s Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera recently issued a statement to confirm his country’s official backing of the Philippines’ territorial sovereignty.

Conducting its own maneuvers in July, the Chinese navy went through a “live firing drill” in the South China Sea, involving about a hundred naval ships with aircraft, missile launchers, and battalions of troops. The official statement through Xinhua called it an exercise to improve maritime combat readiness.

In August, ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh expressed the organization’s concerns over China’s unilateral projects in the South China Sea. The 10-member nations of ASEAN are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. While echoing Minh’s statement regarding China’s behavior, Vietnam and the Philippines have actually experienced heated confrontations with their giant neighbor.

On a diplomatic initiative, Antonio T. Carpio, Senior Associate Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court found China guilty of “grand theft of the global commons” but offered an olive branch solution. He urged China to join the Philippines in declaring the South China Sea a sanctuary for fish and part of the global commons, in a public statement.

Scrapping its low-key practice of installing small buildings on poles in the middle of the South China Sea to support its claims, China’s recent rush to erect structures on the artificial islands has alarmed ASEAN. Minh released a statement calling for a Code of Conduct to hem in China’s activities.

“We are calling for the termination of such activities, which are of concern to us, and eroding trust and confidence among the parties, and complicating the very process of negotiating. In the face of the situation, it is even more urgent for ASEAN and China to early conclude the C.O.C.”

Admiral Harry Harris of the U.S. Pacific Command minced no words in his appraisal of the South China Sea to the Senate Armed Service Committee in September.

“If you look at all of these facilities — and you could imagine a network of missiles sites, runways for their fifth generation fighters and surveillance sites and all that — it creates a mechanism in which China would have de facto control over the South China Sea in any scenario short of war.”

The admiral’s statement, recorded by USNI News, seems to have awakened Americans to a harsh new reality.

[Photo by U.S. Navy /Getty Images]