Posted on 12/13/2013 2:57:59 AM PST by markomalley
A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials.
The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.
“On December 5th, while lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” a Navy official said.
“This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap.”
A State Department official said the U.S. government issued protests to China in both Washington and Beijing in both diplomatic and military channels.
The Cowpens was conducting surveillance of the Liaoning at the time. The carrier had recently sailed from the port of Qingdao on the northern Chinese coast into the South China Sea.
According to the officials, the run-in began after a Chinese navy vessel sent a hailing warning and ordered the Cowpens to stop. The cruiser continued on its course and refused the order because it was operating in international waters.
Then a Chinese tank landing ship sailed in front of the Cowpens and stopped, forcing the Cowpens to abruptly change course in what the officials said was a dangerous maneuver.
According to the officials, the Cowpens was conducting a routine operation done to exercise its freedom of navigation near the Chinese carrier when the incident occurred about a week ago.
The encounter was the type of incident that senior Pentagon officials recently warned could take place as a result of heightened tensions in the region over China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called China’s new air defense zone destabilizing and said it increased the risk of a military “miscalculation.”
China’s military forces in recent days have dispatched Su-30 and J-11 fighter jets, as well as KJ-2000 airborne warning and control aircraft, to the zone to monitor the airspace that is used frequently by U.S. and Japanese military surveillance aircraft.
The United States has said it does not recognize China’s ADIZ, as has Japan’s government.
Two U.S. B-52 bombers flew through the air zone last month but were not shadowed by Chinese interceptor jets.
Chinese naval and air forces also have been pressing Japan in the East China Sea over Tokyo’s purchase a year ago of several uninhabited Senkaku Islands located north of Taiwan and south of Okinawa.
China is claiming the islands, which it calls the Diaoyu. They are believed to contain large undersea reserves of natural gas and oil.
The Liaoning, China’s first carrier that was refitted from an old Soviet carrier, and four warships recently conducted their first training maneuvers in the South China Sea. The carrier recently docked at the Chinese naval port of Hainan on the South China Sea.
Defense officials have said China’s imposition of the ADIZ is aimed primarily at curbing surveillance flights in the zone, which China’s military regards as a threat to its military secrets.
The U.S. military conducts surveillance flights with EP-3 aircraft and long-range RQ-4 Global Hawk drones.
In addition to the Liaoning, Chinese warships in the flotilla include two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and the Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, the Yantai and the Weifang.
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert, said it is likely that the Chinese deliberately staged the incident as part of a strategy of pressuring the United States.
“They can afford to lose an LST [landing ship] as they have about 27 of them, but they are also usually armed with one or more twin 37 millimeter cannons, which at close range could heavily damage a lightly armored U.S. Navy destroyer,” said Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Most Chinese Navy large combat ships would be out-ranged by the 127-millimeter guns deployed on U.S. cruisers, except China’s Russian-made Sovremenny-class ships and Beijing’s new Type 052D destroyers that are armed with 130-millimeter guns.
The encounter appears to be part of a pattern of Chinese political signaling that it will not accept the presence of American military power in its East Asian theater of influence, Fisher said.
“China has spent the last 20 years building up its Navy and now feels that it can use it to obtain its political objectives,” he said.
Fisher said that since early 2012 China has gone on the offensive in both the South China and East China Seas.
“In this early stage of using its newly acquired naval power, China is posturing and bullying, but China is also looking for a fight, a battle that will cow the Americans, the Japanese, and the Filipinos,” he said.
To maintain stability in the face of Chinese military assertiveness, Fisher said the United States and Japan should seek an armed peace in the region by heavily fortifying the Senkaku Islands and the rest of the island chain they are part of.
“The U.S. and Japan should also step up their rearmament of the Philippines,” Fisher said.
The Cowpens incident is the most recent example of Chinese naval aggressiveness toward U.S. ships.
The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship, USNS Impeccable, came under Chinese naval harassment from a China Maritime Surveillance ship, part of Beijing’s quasi-military maritime patrol craft, in June.
During that incident, the Chinese ship warned the Navy ship it was operating illegally despite sailing in international waters. The Chinese demanded that the ship first obtain permission before sailing in the area that was more than 100 miles from China’s coast.
The U.S. military has been stepping up surveillance of China’s naval forces, including the growing submarine fleet, as part of the U.S. policy of rebalancing forces to the Pacific.
The Impeccable was harassed in March 2009 by five Chinese ships that followed it and sprayed it with water hoses in an effort to thwart its operations.
A second spy ship, the USNS Victorious, also came under Chinese maritime harassment several years ago.
Adm. Samuel Locklear, when asked last summer about increased Chinese naval activities near Guam and Hawaii in retaliation for U.S. ship-based spying on China, said the dispute involves different interpretations of controlled waters.
Locklear said in a meeting with reporters in July, “We believe the U.S. position is that those activities are less constrained than what the Chinese believe.”
China is seeking to control large areas of international waters—claiming they are part of its United Nations-defined economic exclusion zone—that Locklear said cover “most of the major sea lines of communication” near China and are needed to remain free for trade and shipping.
Locklear, who is known for his conciliatory views toward the Chinese military, sought to play down recent disputes. When asked if the Chinese activities were troubling, he said: “I would say it’s not provocative certainly. I’d say that in the Asia-Pacific, in the areas that are closer to the Chinese homeland, that we have been able to conduct operations around each other in a very professional and increasingly professional manner.”
The Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command have sought to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of the Obama administration’s Asia pivot policies.
However, China’s military has shown limited interest in closer ties.
China’s state-controlled news media regularly report that the United States is seeking to defeat China by encircling the country with enemies while promoting dissidents within who seek the ouster of the communist regime.
The Obama administration has denied it is seeking to “contain” China and has insisted it wants continued close economic and diplomatic relations.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to seek a new type of major power relationship during a summit in California earlier this year. However, the exact nature of the new relationship remains unclear.
This is precisely what is being advocated for by 1rudeboy, C.Edmund Wright, et.al.
Along with American workers being reduced to the standard of living afforded your rank and file Chinese.
They simply want to get there by a different route. Rather than central government planning, they prefer unlimited greed as the vehicle.
Capitalism is a good way to run an economy, but a piss poor way to run a nation. That’s why we have a Constitution designed to limit government powers. So that the powerful and wealthy can’t manipulate the levers of government to their financial advantage.
It is a lie that “liberals” caused the current levels of government spending, when jobs were being exported wholesale, in pursuit of more money for wall street, without regard to the health and security of the nation.
Just as it is a lie that the unions and environmentalists must be neutered before any manufacturing can return to the U.S.
Unless business and national policy are guided by Christian morality and Constitutional restraints, our country loses. We’re here debating which disease should kill us most effectively. Trade with the Chinese didn’t cause this situation, but neither did liberalism and unions.
Only God’s morality and libertarian constitutionalism will ever resolve it.
It’s considered bad form to mention someone without pinging them. Even worse to misrepresent them.
Wow! That’s some footage. The captain of that Soviet destroyer was an idiot. Was there any sort of protest filed over this?
BING..! I can think of no finer analogy then that.!! It's what the "left" continuously does to the conservatives...Change the name and thereby change the argument..!
Not a slam on you Lurker...... just an observation.....
I fully agree...NO one can abide a "Robert Mugabe" with 10,000 nuclear weapons...Sooner or later, they will be forced to act...
I think this is exactly correct.
To maintain stability in the face of Chinese military assertiveness, Fisher said the United States and Japan should seek an armed peace in the region by heavily fortifying the Senkaku Islands and the rest of the island chain they are part of.
Again, I agree.
The problem is that the US is so indebted to China--in fact, it is almost a wholly owned subsidiary of China--that it has placed itself in a very weak position.
Plus, the Obama administration seems to believe in the (rather dubious) principle of peace through weakness; so it has been busily hollowing out the US military, while China has been fervidly ramping up its own--thereby making confrontation less plausible, from the American perspective.
The Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command have sought to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of the Obama administration’s Asia pivot policies.
However, China’s military has shown limited interest in closer ties.
Which goes to show that Chinese officials have a better grasp of the real situation than our own president does...
Good idea, but while we try to roll back FedGov™ tyranny we don't sell out to Commies and third world fascist regimes in the process.
To my knowledge..it never happened. The Soviets used unarmed fishing trawlers..they posted no threat...I was referring to the tactic used to shoo them off. You are correct that a GM cruiser is a whole different animal..
Although I am not eager for another war--either with China or with any other country--I do find myself wondering: Why might any such war "destroy [the] western monetary system" and/or destroy "capitalism in general"?
I asked the question because most libertarians believe that there should be a free flow of labor. Judge Napolitano wrote an article almost a year ago advocating that employers should be allowed to import any workers they needed and the government should stay out of it.
Nope. I'd happily eliminate 95% of the regulations added in the last 30 years while booting 95% of the illegals who came here in the last 30 years.
We don't need illegals nor do we need 1.2 million LEGAL IMMIGRANTS a year while over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
Not everyone on this thread arguing against higher tariffs on this thread is a libertarian. Some simply might be applying supply-side economics. And one does not have to be a libertarian to believe that higher taxes are a bad idea, or believe in free(r) markets.
Did I say that?
You stated, “I asked the question because most libertarians believe that there should be a free flow of labor.” The implication being that you are arguing with libertarians.
I'm sure they were, but I doubt it was pushed very hard. We made our point (that the Black Sea was not a Soviet internal water and was subject under international law to the same right of innocent passage as any other open sea) just conducting the transit and the USSR collapsed shortly afterwards anyway.
I conducted quite a few Freedom of Navigation (FON) transits when I was active duty. They are all about establishing precedent.
If I ever see a libertarian posting that, I'll point out his error.
We don't need illegals nor do we need 1.2 million LEGAL IMMIGRANTS a year while over 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.
Sounds good.
That's wrong. In peacetime, in international waters, ships are allowed to go where they please. That's the source of much of the naval jockeying during the Cold War - both sides were well within their rights. It was psychological gamesmanship. Neither side's officers were cleared to open fire (and would have faced sanctions if they had).
It should be interesting to find out if China's military officers have been given the discretion handed over the Imperial Japan's officers in the run-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Ultimately, the Chinese government may have handed control over the decision to go to war to a bunch of junior officers, in hopes of low-cost territorial gains.
It's kind of funny that China would pick non-Muslim or moderate Muslim countries to expand against. Would anyone care if China made either Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan a Chinese province? Maybe you should counsel your co-ethnics about the folly of encroaching upon the territory of Dar al-Harb.
Well yeah....I agree if the Cowpens could have laid off and used her weaponry. the way I read the article the chicom LST stopped dead in the Cowpens path and she had to change course abruptly.
She can also call in a B-52 Strike, but you know that ain't gonna happen...
“Why might any such war “destroy [the] western monetary system” and/or destroy “capitalism in general”? “
Money is a zero coupon debt instrument. It is a debt where you present paper, they give you something of value in return. If the USA and China, the two world’s largest economies shrink dramatically, the paper is no good as there is no longer anything of value. That would be the death of western monetary system and of capitalism.
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