US Navy Destroyer Sails Across Triton Island, Angers China

A US Navy guided-missile destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, on Saturday (Jan 30) sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Zhongjian Dao in the Xisha Islands, which, according to the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s office, was “innocent passage” and “consistent with global law”.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davies declared: “This operation challenged attempts by the three claimants-China, Taiwan and Vietnam-to restrict navigation rights and freedoms”.

The Pentagon confirmed its operation in South China Sea.

During his visit, Ma said Taiwan would use Taiping Island as the starting point for implementation of his South China Sea Peace Initiative by transforming Taiping into “an island for peace and rescue operations, as well as an ecologically friendly and low-carbon island”. “Obviously, the provocation was aimed at plunging the South China Sea into chaos again and it is expected to help the U.S. to profit from the escalating tensions”.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized the United States Saturday after an American warship sailed near a disputed island in the South China Sea, the Associated Press reported.

Three months ago, the Navy sent another guided-missile destroyer on a similar mission close to one of the artificial islands China has built on a partly submerged reef in the South China Sea. “It’s bad because it would involve an unreasonably assertive interpretation of the worldwide law of the sea, and because it shows such little regard for the impact of such action on regional stability”, Bateman writes in a blog of the Australian Strategy Policy Institute. As James Kraska of the Naval War College explained to USNI, “China has established unlawful straight baselines around all the [Paracel] islands – which is illegal”.

China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun called the United States action, “very unprofessional and irresponsible for the safety of the troops of both sides, and may cause extremely risky consequences”.

In December, China urged the U.S.to stop “provocative actions” following the flight of two B-52 bombers near islands it claims in the South China Sea. The island is administered and occupied by the Republic of China, but other countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China, also claim sovereignty.

President Barack Obama called on China in November to halt construction on some of the 3,000 acres of newly-created islands in the disputed waters that are now being militarized with airfields, deep water ports, and other military features. Vietnam, of course, does not control Triton Island, nor is it the target of the U.S. military build-up in Asia. The aim, in undertaking these naval patrols, is to assert “freedom of navigation” (FON), “to ensure that US naval, coast guard, and civilian ships, and by extension those of all nations, maintain unrestricted access to their rights at sea”, while doing so in such a manner that averts military conflict with China, explain Michael J. Green, Bonnie S. Glaser, and Gregory B. Poling in an article for the CSIS.

The statement said the USA operation was a “severe” violation of law which undermined the “peace, security as well as the good order in the relevant waters”.