US B-52 bombers fly near islands claimed by China

“We conduct B-52 flights in global air space in that part of the world all the time”, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told a news briefing earlier on Thursday.

The bombers, which flew their mission on November 8-9, received two verbal warnings from Chinese ground controllers, media reports quoted Urban as saying.

China is building several artificial islands in the disputed area, which is a part of the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, to host radar stations, airstrips and other facilities. Indonesia has asked China to clarify its claims over the South China Sea but has yet to receive a response, the Foreign Ministry said today, a day after Indonesia’s security chief said Jakarta could take Beijing to court over an island dispute.

Last month, the destroyer USS Lassen sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly Islands in a move many in Congress said was long overdue to challenge China’s claims in the region.

Graham notes that the “demonstration value could be thrown dangerously into reverse if Beijing drew the conclusion that the conduct of innocent passage amounts to customary acceptance of a de jure territorial sea around Subi Reef and other submerged features or low-tide elevations under China’s control in the Spratlys”.

The nine-dash line which China uses to justify its claims of nearly all of the South China Sea was originally created by the Nationalist Party, which fled to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party.

“We are quite concerned about protecting freedom of navigation, the free flow of commerce in the South China Sea”, Earnest told reporters.

“This, though, is not a USA agreement or US code, it’s one that would need to be implemented by the parties involved”. Admiral Harry Harris, head of the US Pacific Command, has called them the “great wall of sand”, and in September, when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited President Obama in Washington, he promised not to militarize the Spratly chain.

China responded on Thursday to a warning from Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan that Indonesia might follow the Philippines’ step of taking China to an worldwide tribunal if China and Indonesia could not reach an amicable solution to their dispute over the Natuna Islands. Last year, for instance, a Chinese fighter intercepted a US Navy P-8 near Woody Island, drawing a protest from the Pentagon. As Panjaitan put it, “We would like to see a solution on this in the near future through dialogue, or we could bring it to the worldwide Criminal Court”.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the summit is an important platform for regional cooperation and development, and it was not appropriate to discuss the issue there.

Numerous commentaries on the FONOPs reintroduce the old claim that somehow China threatens the freedom of commercial navigation through the South China Sea.

The United States will increase its military incursions in the South China Sea if Beijing fails to come on strong, says a military expert. The nine-dash line is a problem we are facing, but not only us.