Posted on 08/20/2012 11:18:15 AM PDT by Marcus
James Webb, the outgoing Democratic Senator from Virginia, is sounding the alarm about the next big world crisis taking place in the South China Sea. Naturally, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it in hopes the crisis will go away.
Beijing has, in effect, laid sovereign claim to much of the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands. China is also clashing with the Philippines over the Spratley Islands and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. China is prepared to back up these claims by establishing a small colony on Woody Island in the Paracels with a military garrison and stepped up naval patrols.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.yahoo.com ...
Actually, China has a claim to both the Paracels and the Spratleys.
China’s isn’t the only claim, but her claim is a lot better than that of Malaysia, Brunei, etc.
Now that she has a sea-lift ability, what else is to be expected than that she would try and enforce those claims?
It’s only a “crisis” if China finds the going so easy that she comes to think she can expand even beyond her “natural waters”; and not stop until she fines resistance.
(But will she find any real “resistance”?)
Is the Phillipines (which has, IIRC, one ex-US Coast Guard vessel for a navy) expected to resist?
Several of these countries had pressed their claims in the past with the comfort of knowing the US was in the area and would back them up. Now that the US has less of a pressence — in part because countries like the Phillipines kicked us out in a fit of hubris and nationalism — they are left to face China alone. So the chances of them winning any of these claims are pretty slim. So, of course, now countries like the Phillipines are screaming for us to back them up again. As ye sew, so shall ye reap.
And it’s not just China and not just the South China Sea.
Japan is currently fighting with South Korea about one uninhabited island and with Russia about the Kuril Islands as well. Both have risen all the way to the top of the political food chain on all sides. Tensions are very high all over the Aisa-Pacific region.
Let the countries in the region sort it out. It’s none of our business.
So let’s tell all our allies to go to hell, eh?
Not me.
Pei-Ping.
No ... let's tell them we're already stretched too thin and we're broke. It's not as though they, and China, don't already know this.
In other words, give up.
“.... with the comfort of knowing the US was in the area and would back them up” ??
HA !
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