As we enter the Year of the Rooster, a fierce debate rages over whether Donald Trump is trying to stake his claim as the Great Red Rooster lording it over the South China Sea.
First we had Secretary of State nominee Rex “T. Rex” Tillerson equating Chinese island-building activity in the South China Sea to “Russia’s taking of Crimea” and insisting “access to these islands also is not going to be allowed.” Then we had White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s pledge to defend “international territories” in the South China Sea.
All this after Trump had blamed Beijing for building a “massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea.”
Keeping things consistent, US Think Tankland, through its myriad octopus-like manifestations, has invariably called for the proverbial “military muscle” to prevent that favorite neocon mantra: “Chinese aggression”.
China’s Foreign Ministry has been remarkably cool. While stressing Beijing would not be drawn in to a “hypothetical” situation – a US blockade – “non-negotiable sovereignty” over Nansha Qundao (the Spratly islands) and surrounding areas was once again stressed. Moreover, “the United States is not a country directly involved in the South China Sea.”
The Beltway nevertheless considers the US directly involved, in the sense that Beijing will never be allowed to become the self-proclaimed master of security in the South China Sea. All that “muscular” South China Sea talk, coupled with the veiled threat of revising the One China policy, should be seen as Trump administration tactics to prevent a geopolitical vacuum.
Actually blockading islands in the South China Sea implies the folly of an act of war. Team Trump aims, at best, at positioning America to extract trade concessions from Beijing further on down the road.
All about OBOR
China-ASEAN bilateral trade reached US$472.16 billion in 2015. The target for 2020 is a whopping US$1 trillion.
Southeast Asia is an absolutely key hub in China’s New Silk Roads/One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project. It is, as a whole, eager for top-class connectivity with China. But depending on the strength of the Chinese trade/business diaspora in each nation, controversy reigns, to varying degrees, on whether connectivity implies becoming a hostage of a Sino-centric tributary system.
Diplomatically, Beijing is trying hard to deploy soft power.
In their September 2016 summit in Laos, China and the ASEAN bloc pledged to respect freedom of navigation in the South China Sea (which Washington insists is in danger); to solve territorial disputes peacefully, through negotiations (which happens to be the official Chinese position) and with consideration for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and finally to come up with a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (optimistically, a binding text will be ready before summer.)
The South China Sea is not only the key hub of China’s highly complex global supply chain. As much as the South China Sea protects China’s access to the Indian Ocean, which happens to be Beijing’s crucial energy transit route, Woody Island in the Paracels, southeast of Hainan island, is another key bridgehead in the Maritime Silk Road.
For Beijing, expansion between the Spratly and Paracel islands means breaking through the geographical limits of Southeast Asia to project power through the Indian Ocean all the way to Southwest Asia; once again, OBOR in effect.
No matter who is in the White House, the Pentagon won’t refrain from its FON (Freedom of Navigation) program, from B-52 overflights in the South China Sea to more “muscular” US Navy patrols. When
Beijing counterpunched – showing off one of its H-6K long-range nuclear-capable bombers over Scarborough Shoal, near the Philippines – no wonder the Pentagon went on red alert. Because the Great Game in the South China Sea has everything to do with China’s aerial and underwater military prowess – and how it might be able to face off eventual Pentagon maneuvers to disrupt OBOR.
Enter the “access” drama queens
The whole Chinese economic miracle always relied upon the eastern seaboard’s astonishing production/export performance. Yet, strategically, China has no direct access to the open seas. Geophysics can be implacable: China is “blocked” by islands all around.
Wu Shicun, the president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, has been solid over the years that all of Beijing’s actions boil down to securing strategic access to the opens seas. The Beltway, in contrast, sees it as the attempt to secure a “Chinese lake”. It is, in fact, about China securing its own naval backyard – the crucial entry and exit point for China’s complex global supply chains.
Beijing ultimately aims at puncturing the US belief that it must have full, unrestricted “access” to the seven seas, the bedrock of its Empire of Bases. China is now in a position to successfully defend the strategic southern island of Hainan. Yulin naval base in Hainan hosts China’s expanded submarine fleet, which not only features stalwarts such as the 094A Jin-class submarine, but has the capability to deliver China’s new generation ICBM, the JL-3, with an estimated range of 12,000km. So China now is able not only to protect but also to project power, aiming ultimately at unrestricted access to the Western Pacific.
Initially, the US counterpunch to all this was “Anti-Access”, or A2, plus Area Denial, which in Pentagonese translates as A2/AD. Yet China has incrementally evolved its own very sophisticated A2/AD tactics, including cyberwarfare; submarines equipped with cruise missiles; and most of all anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the Dongfeng 21-D, the ultimate nightmare for those sitting duck billion-dollar US aircraft carriers.
A program called Pacific Vision, funded by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments, eventually came up with the Air-Sea Battle concept. Virtually everything about Air-Sea Battle is classified. But even as the concept was being elaborated, China mastered the art of long-range ballistic missiles – a lethal threat to the Empire of Bases, fixed and/or floating.
What is known is that the core Air-Sea Battle concept, in Orwellian Pentagonese, is “NIA/D3”: “networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces”. To break through the fog, this is how the Pentagon would trample over Chinese A2/AD – being able to attack all sorts of Chinese command and control centers in a swarm of “surgical operations”.
So these, in a nutshell, are the extremely high stakes in the event of the Trump administration ever daring to install a blockade in the South China Sea.
The recent diplomatic charm offensive by China spells out the absurdity of any military offensive against an ASEAN member: it’s bad for business. The environment after The Hague’s ruling – as the Laos summit proved – points toward long-term diplomatic solutions for all South China Sea disputes.
In parallel, Trump or no Trump, the indispensable nation’s military hegemony over the South China Sea must always be undisputed. But already it is not. China has positioned itself as a cunning, asymmetrical aspirant to “peer competitor”. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when” there is a serious confrontation between Red Rooster Trump and Red Rooster Xi over “access” to the South China Sea.
Congratulations senhor! A fine armchair analysis. When shall we expect your next thesis how to make safe in three easy steps?
Im backing Chinese on this one.
China wants to avoid the Thucydides Trap, but is nevertheless prepared for it. It appears the show-hand moment is near.
I read recently that American direct investment into China has averaged 10billion USD per year for the past 25 years. Seems (to me) there is big league American financial power within China, and it makes me wonder how much of the current military posturing is just that…theatre…with a nice dividend for American domestic arms developers and manufacturers
The US needs a lesson on one’s limitations. Tweeter Trump and Bowser Boy Tillerson’ s aggressive posture and desire to attack China will mean that US and Chinese families will be seeing a lot of body bags.
I have never seen a nation such as the US go from saving the free world to becoming the evil empire in less than 70 years. Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Afghanistan (during Soviet invasion), Iran ( backing the wrong horse), daving Kuwait and then the invasion of Iraq, 9/11 and then reinvision of Afghanistan, Syria and now the pending nuclear war with China.
Mark my words, China will choose mutual nuclear destruction with the US) rather than total defeat in a conventional war.
I cannot believe the other Asean countries who started the SCS competing claims have not announced their support of China. If China is alone in the fight with the US, the silent Asean nations will have find it difficult to share in the SCS.
All talk and bluff by the US hoping China will back down…The US won’t attack a nation that fights back..expect the NGO’s to do their dirty work maybe another colour revolution.
China will not be alone. They are backed by Russia and at least Iran. Besides i wonder how the Pentagon is going to take two or three of it´s carrier groups on the bottom of the ocean after the first hour of battle? Go nuclear? Old men like McCain do not fear that as they are at the end of their lives anyway. But the rest of the USA certainly should be worrying.
China still has time to evacuate
The USA can’t handle North Korea which has a few inconsequential nuclear bombs. As in consequential for the rest of thw world. Donald Trump thinks he is smart in pushing the Chinese now to achieve favourable negotiated outcomes later. The Chinese have known negotiation tactics for a long long time. Donald should not count on winning. He may lose big time.
I truly agreed with you, very well said .
I thought Trump said before he got elected something like he wasn’t happy with the USA being thought of as being the world’s policeman yet now that he has become the president, he’s just continuing on with that policeman role.
The Chinese are much more intelligent than the Americans. Deng Xiaoping once said that it was glorious for the Chinese to become rich for they would then live better. Joe Biden, on the other hand, once implied that it was glorious for the Americans to be stupid for they would then feel that they were free. Should there be war between China and the USA on the South China Sea, the USA will be destroyed.
Here we go again from the ‘exceptional and indispensable’ lunatic warmongering US that is like another people that thought they were ‘uber alles’.
that’s a stupid question. idiots
China Warns this…and China Warns that…man I am sick of this shit. Go ahead…get to work. Jerk those pistols, skin that "Smoke Wagon"… and see what happens…
I am sick of the Chinese narrative: Our collective " Century of Humiliation "….man…GET OVER IT….Who hasn’t been humiliated at some point?
China promised a peaceful rise? Bullshit! China has skillfully " Hidden Their Capabilities " now revealing the true Ambitions of their government.
Bitch all you want about the USA. But consider this…The USA has done a good job preventing WWW 3 from taking place.
China…it’s your turn to find a diplomatic solution to these problems… partnering with The USA…
This article cannot be taken serious if the writer is no other than Pepe Scobar a Putin’s backer and an anti-US troll.
In 2001, the USA raised an army of hundreds of thousands soldiers, travelled more than fifteen kilometres with all their sophisticated military gear, and invaded Afghanistan. The purpose of this military expedition: to Look for one single individual, namely, Bin Laden who was not protected by a country or an army. Can you imagine an army of hundreds of thousands soldiers looking for one individual? This is the height of stupidity. We must go back some three thousand years to find a comparable stupid military expedition. Three thousand years ago, Agammenon, king of Mycaena, raised an army of tens of thousands of Greek soldiers, crossed the Aegean Sea and invaded the country of Troy. The purpose of the expedition: to bring back a slut woman, namely, Helen, who ran away with her lover. To show his commitment to the expedition, King Agammenon even murdered his daughter before the Greeks took to the sea. It took the Greek army ten years to destroy Troy. Meanwhile, in his own country, Agammenon was cuckolded. And when he came back to Mycaena after ten years, Agammenon was murdered by the very man who cuckolded him and his wife.
In the case of the Americans, it took them more than ten years to finally find Bin Laden. And Bill Laden was not even in Afghanistan, the country where the hundreds of thousands soldiers were looking for him. Bin Laden was in Pakistan and the Americans found him because he was betrayed by a Pakistani. And while the hundreds of thousands soldiers were looking for Bin Laden in Afghanistan, the USA had to pay billions of dollars to the Pakistani government for the passage of supplies through Pakistan to Afghanistan. Most probably, Bin Laden was watching the passage of the convoys of supplies in Pakistan and was quietly smiling.
And when the Americans finally found Bin Lade, they dared not capture him for fear that Bin Laden might destroy them. Instead, they rained thousands of bullets on him from a safe distance and killed him.
The Pakistani who betrayed Bin Laden is now in jail, not because he betrayed Bin Laden but because he killed the cow that was giving to the Pakistanis free milk.
Soon after the stupid military expedition of Agammenon, Mycaena, which enjoyed a high level of civilisation, declined and disappeared. It is perhaps too early to see any tangible sign of the decline of the USA after a military expedition of equal stupidity. But spending more than a trillion dollars to look for a single individual certainly weighs on the economic health of a country.
If they only new the technology we have Redirect Missue Launch. When N.Korea launshes a nuclear wepon we can override there system and renavigate it to our choosing.
Pepe Escobar, Trump, Xi et al: Russia may have electrogravitic A2/AD systems above China & U.S. See "AEGIS Fail in Black SEA, Ruskies Burn Down USS Donald ‘Duck’ " (2014, Ed. Note by Gordon Duff) at http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/11/13/aegis-fail-in-black-sea-ruskies-burn-down-uss-donald-duck ("Is This Why Keshe Was Poisoned?").
Since Russia may have used such electrogravitic A2/AD in Ukraine, Syria & Black Sea, the U.S. miitary is truly concerned. With Trump as U.S. Prez, Russia may share such A2/AD with U.S. or China.
Inventor says that the new A2/AD can neutralize ALL electronics & weapons systems on land, sea & air. If so, then bye-bye rooster?
Aam Aadmi Exactly, these whiteys constant genitalia obsession is worth examining.
Says people that eat with knives.
Oh the horror that the US is actively attempting to thwart a vast unprecedented attempt by China to violate clear international law and make outrageous claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea. Just because it is called the South China Sea does not make it part of China. In reality this is all about the Spratly islands and the oil under them. Naked Chinese economic aggression to the detriment of Chinese neighbors.
The the author attempts to call out the US for saying no, and supporting international law, and the regions smaller states that are being threatened.
I suggest that you "renavigate" to dictionary.com…
Shuami Bev We have tested on June 22 and twice in November check and see see what the result was all three launches out of New Korea spiraled out of control we also keep an Ohio sub within launching distance from there Coast.
Well, China is no saint but it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black on the part of the US government, where international law is concerned.
The US’ list of international convention which it did not sign / ratify:
1948 – Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, not signed
1949 – Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949, not signed
1950 – Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, not signed
1951 – Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, party to only the 1967 protocol
1951 – Equal Remuneration Convention, not ratified
1954 – Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, not signed
1958 – Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, not ratified
1960 – Convention against Discrimination in Education, not ratified
1961 – Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, not signed
1962 – Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages, signed but not ratified
1964 – Employment Policy Convention, 1964, not ratified
1966 – International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed but not ratified
1966 – First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, not signed
1969 – Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, not ratified
1969 – Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, signed but not ratified
1972 – Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed but withdrew in 2002
1977 – American Convention on Human Rights, signed but not ratified
1977 – Protocol I (an amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions), not ratified
1977 – Protocol II (an amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions), not ratified
1979 – Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, signed but not ratified
1979 – Moon Treaty
1981 – Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981, not ratified
1989 – Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, not signed
1989 – Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed but not ratified
1989 – Basel Convention, signed but not ratified
1990 – United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, not signed
1991 – United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, not signed
1992 – Convention on Biological Diversity, signed but not ratified
1994 – Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel, signed but not ratified
1996 – Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed but not ratified
1997 – Kyoto Protocol, signed with no intention to ratify
1997 – Ottawa Treaty (Mine Ban Treaty), unsigned
1998 – Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, unsigned
1999 – Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, not signed
1999 – Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, signed but not ratified
1999 – Civil Law Convention on Corruption, not signed
2002 – Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, not signed
2006 – International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, not signed
2007 – Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, signed but not ratified
2008 – Convention on Cluster Munitions, not signed
2011 – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, signed but not yet ratified
In this context, take note that [1991 – United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, not signed] was not signed by the US. How can then it claim to defend international law when it refuses to be bound by it?
Can the US even qualify to be an amicus curiae?
Until the US governement stops pretending that it is acting for the international community, it might be a bit more credible it its arguments.
Tino Tan there are many proposed international laws that China hasn’t signed either – what’s your point. There are many international laws and and principles that China is actively violation, in particular unilaterally claiming sovereignty on parts of the ocean previously claimed and recognized internationally of their neighbors. That is technically an act of war.
David K Parsons Most probably also, the USA renavigated the missiles launched by Trident to the USA. This was revealed recently.
Haven’t I said it already: The pot calling the kettle black? Or if you are more biblically inclined:
How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Luke 6:42 (New International Version). Matthew 7:5 also refers.
The point is that the US does not have the moral authority it claims to tell the others what to do and don the cloak of respectability when its motives are questionable at best and machiavellian at worst,
Tino Tan does anyone have the moral authority to tell China no? Or just no Country that can actually do anything about it?
They never were policemen they were Mafia Enforcers.
Prevented World War Three? How so? The US has invaded, occupied, bombed back to the stone age and over threw the governments of more than 50 countries just since the Second Wrold War. That was world war three piecemeal, but none the less third world war. Just because the US was slaughtering Arabs, Asians, Central Americans and South Americans doesn´t mean that it was not a world war. It was and still is. the only way we will have peace in the world is after the US and Europe are destroyed. Not before. The white race are the killers on the planet.
Pepe and me both. But please take the time to learn how to spell his name before writing comments about him. ( It is Escobar not Scobar)
Spelling is obviously not your strong suit.
Michael Chan
Yes and headed it right for Florida. Like a Russian General recently said " In the event of war americans are going to have a rude awakening about just how invisible their aircraft and missiles are."
They will also find out that missile defence is a myth. The only missiles that these defence systems have shot down, were the ones where they knew the launch location, time of launch had a preprogramed trajectory, knew the speed etc. of the missile and then they were not any where close to 100% successful. So for Americans, my advice is in the event of war with a nuclear armed country, you should really invest in a good quality umbrella, you will get a lot more protection from missiles with that than any missile defence system.
And in the USA yesterday, the American geniuses redirected the bombs dropped by their planes directly on the spotters on the ground and killed the spotters.
Ail Davies Yashas is a brown lowly India desperately want to be white and proficient in his master’s language.
John W Garnham The ones that have the moral authority are likely not inclined to do so, such as Switzerland. Ironic, isn’t it?
Alternatively, we could use the UN General Assembly but we both know how that will go. Unfortunately, we are entering the multipower balance of power reminscent of the earlier centuries.
So, short of war, no one will be able to tell the superpowers what to do.
Sure like your style Pepe 🙂
Tino Tan yes we are entering into a multi polar world. The likelihood of war increases if issues are not dealt with early before problems become entrenched. At this point the US is one of the few countries capable and willing. If this is allowed to continue, China will continue to demand more until their neighbors think they have nothing to loose. That’s when truly horrible things will happen.
Tuna Van You must have tried some and came away gagging. No sweat.