By Ankit Panda
The U.S. Navy will likely sail within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef soon.
The U.S. Navy may be gearing up for its second freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese artificial island. Bill Gertz, at the Washington Free Beacon, citing U.S. officials with knowledge of matter, reports that two U.S. Navy warships will sail within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef. The operation is expected to take place in “several weeks.” The U.S. Navy carried out its first freedom of navigation operation within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese artificial island on October 27, when an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the USS Lassen, sailed past Subi Reef.
The choice of Mischief Reef for a second freedom of navigation operation makes sense and should help the Obama administration assert that it does not recognize any territorial sea claim around these features in the Spratly Islands. As I wrote recently, the October 27 operation left matters ambiguous, causing considerable disagreement among many well-informed South China Sea experts about what precisely the United States asserted with its freedom of navigation operation there. The United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) determines the conditions under which certain features generated maritime entitlements, including 12 nautical mile territorial seas and 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones.
The United States’ policy is to take no position on the sovereignty of individual features in the South China Sea, but to categorically reject excessive maritime claims stemming from those features. Complicating matters further, China has, to date, refused to clearly state what it claims around its occupied features in the South China Sea. It has referred to the airspace and waters around its artificial islands as a “military alert zone,” a term that has no precise meaning in international law. (This is in addition to its already ambiguous nine-dashed line claim, which encompasses around 90 percent of the South China Sea.)
Read the full story at The Diplomat