A standoff looms in the South China Sea
US keeps a wary watch as China threatens to usurp its military dominance in the Pacific Editor’s note: This is part of a joint project by the Medill News Service and USA TODAY.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, dressed in dark green camouflage, stood on the deck of a destroyer this year and admired the massive display of military might: 10,000 soldiers, sailors and other personnel, 76 fighter jets and 48 warships. ❚ It was China’s largest military exercise in the nation’s modern history. It was as if, on that day in April, Beijing owned the South China Sea. Analysts said that was the point.
China has been rapidly militarizing disputed territories in the South China Sea, some say as part of a strategy to usurp U.S. geopolitical dominance of the region, including the critical shipping routes.
“The task of building a powerful People’s Navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” Xi proudly told service members after the historic exercise.
The United States has countered China’s island militarization with a more direct and aggressive approach.
After withdrawing an invitation to China to take part in an international military exercise in May, the United States flew two B-52 bombers over a contested island in the South China Sea. This move, which the United States defended as a “routine flying mission,” was harshly criticized by China, adding to the provocative back-and-forth between the two powers.
“There is a polarization going on in the region that’s fundamentally driven by this U.S.-China competition,” said Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corp., a prominent think tank. “All friction points are likely to see more friction.”
The Navy patrols the sea lanes at a pace that has pushed its 7th Fleet operations tempo to the most demanding in decades to safeguard U.S. commercial interests and affirm the country’s commitments to regional allies and partners.
Last summer, after two 7th Fleet destroyers were involved in collisions that cost 17 sailors their lives, the intensity of western Pacific operations was brought into broader public view.
U.S. military operations in the region were spotlighted even more when President Donald Trump held a summit June 12 in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Although Trump vowed to end U.S. military exercises with South Korean forces, the full impact on U.S. Navy operations in the western Pacific is far from clear, as are nearly all details from their meeting.
Xi said during a speech in 2015 at the White House that Beijing would not militarize outposts in the South China Sea. Xi also said that China has the right to defend its “territorial sovereignty and lawful and legitimate maritime rights and interests” and that many of the islands have belonged to China since “ancient times.”
Incremental advances
Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer and special assistant to the chief of naval operations, said China’s militarization of islands in the region has been incremental to avoid escalating frictions with the United States or an outbreak of war. He said the United States should have understood China’s strategy long ago and come up with an approach to resist it.
Over the past five years, China has methodically developed islands in the South China Sea that are in the middle of a territorial dispute with multiple other nations, ignoring international law and courts. The U.S. Navy responded by routinely sailing warships through these disputed waters as a projection of military and political might.
The United States heightened tensions with China by naming it as a direct U.S. competitor as part of the Trump administration’s release of its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, both of which were highly critical of Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.
Robert Sutter, an international affairs professor at the Elliott School of George Washington University, said the United States and China are in an “unremitting struggle,” and the language used by the Trump administration in the two national security reports has not been used in decades.
“We just haven’t seen something like this since (President Richard) Nixon,” Sutter said. “This is a Cold War document.”
The stakes of the western Pacific chess match are potentially enormous.
“Everybody is keenly aware ... (of ) what’s at play and the importance that our interests are protected and understood,” Capt. Michael Donnelly, commanding officer of the USS Ronald Reagan, said in Yokosuka, Japan, home port to the ship as the Navy’s forward deployed aircraft carrier.
Territorial tangle
The South China Sea is hotly contested for a litany of economic, political, and historical reasons. Twenty-one percent of all global trade made its way through the waterway in 2016, according to research by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The same study found that nearly two-thirds of China’s maritime trade traversed the sea, and nearly 42 percent of Japan’s maritime trade did as well.
The South China Sea has more than economic meaning for Indo-Pacific nations on its shores. In China’s case, the ties are linked to nationalism and sovereignty claims.
Since 1947, the government of China has claimed territorial sovereignty over what is known as the “nine-dash line,” a region that encompasses the majority of the South China Sea.
China insists that the area within the nine-dash line be recognized as its territory despite dispute by the international community. China became more adamant after the discovery of oil and gas beneath the surface.
In congressional testimony in March, Adm. Harry Harris, then the top military commander in the Pacific region, predicted that if Chinese military modernization continues at its current pace, China’s navy will surpass Russia’s as the world’s second-largest by 2020.
There are two main island groups in the South China Sea that are at the center of the dispute: the Paracel islands and the Spratly islands, the same island group Xi vowed not to militarize.
China has developed military facilities on seven of the islands in the Spratly group over the past few years. The islands have been outfitted with airstrips capable of landing and launching military aircraft; hangars that can hold fighter jets and bombers; barracks; and ammunition storage facilities.
Harris said features placed on the island are “short-term defensive,” but the United States should expect Beijing to use these facilities “to support advanced military capabilities.” Harris said the islands are meant to project China’s power across the entirety of the South China Sea.
To challenge China’s claims and militarization over disputed island groups, the U.S. Navy regularly conducts freedom-of-navigation operations (FO-NOPs) through the South China Sea. The operations involve sailing a naval vessel through disputed waters to show the United States does not recognize China’s nine-dash line claim.
Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power project at the CSIS, said the Trump administration handles such operations in a “clearer, more regular” way that is “directly challenging China in ways that the Obama administration was a little anxious about doing.”
Retired Admiral Gary Roughead, former chief of naval operations who spent the majority of his career working the Indo-Pacific, said the United States needs to be bolder to demonstrate a commitment to discouraging Chinese aggression.
“If you want to deter, you have to deter with something more than a freedom-of-navigation operation,” he said.
He said U.S. ships should “operate more routinely in the South and East China seas,” both with partners and alone. U.S. ships should call frequently in Southeast Asian ports, performing professional and humanitarian activities scheduled with allies, he said.