China Invites India to South China Sea

U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said Washington believed that the US commitment to freedom of navigation was welcomed by ASEAN.

As soon as the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen breached 12-nautical-mile territorial limits around one of China’s man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea last week, a Chinese warship shadowing its movements began demanding answers.

He added that the US backs its patrols with the legal grounds of its freedom of navigation in worldwide waters but added that this statement will not satisfy Beijing, and given the rise of China in recent years, the Xi Jinping administration will not accept this and will not stand back and let America do as it pleases in the region.

The struggle between the U.S. and China over the South China Sea is gradually becoming nastier and more complicated.

Thirdly, China respects other countries’ freedom of navigation in accordance with worldwide law. Japan and Australia expressed support, as did the European Union. As for Francis and his crew of 300 sailors, they were unfazed by the intense media coverage of one of the most highly anticipated USA naval patrols in years, although Francis said his mother, having seen the news, did call to ask whether he was actually in China.

Indeed, immediately following the freedom of navigation operation, the White House began issuing instructions across the administration to tone down any language relating to the operation, communicating publicly through a senior administration official that “we don’t want to make this a bigger deal than it already is”.

Carter toured the aircraft carrier with Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. Vietnam, Malaysia the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims.

“Being here on the Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea is a symbol and signifies the stabilizing presence that the United States has had in this part of the world for decades”, Carter told reporters as the carrier sailed about 150 to 200 nautical miles from the southern tip of the Spratlys and about 70 nautical miles north of Malaysia. China denies it’s impeding freedom of navigation or overflight in the waterway.

“It’s one other day within the South China Sea”.

The administration now has a chance at redemption.

Both men, along with China’s Defense Minister Chang Wanquan, participated in a meeting on Wednesday of Southeast Asian defense ministers and their counterparts from across the Asia-Pacific in Kuala Lumpur. Secretary Carter was there.

On November 5, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter visited the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that is sailing through the South China Sea, in a show of force that emphasizes the US’s naval supremacy in the region.

China, as a major country, is conducting construction activities on a few South China Sea islands at a pace and with a scale befitting its global responsibilities and obligations in such fields as maritime search and rescue, disaster prevention and mitigation, navigation safety and fishery services in the South China Sea.

Otherwise another opportunity to project strength in defense of US allies and USA interests will have been squandered by an administration that seems incapable of pursuing any foreign policy with clarity of goal.