By Sean P. Quirk
How to counter China’s maritime claims while defusing U.S.-China military tensions.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing. Passing, harassing, and shadowing in the case of Chinese vessels meeting U.S. warships.
Such exchanges comprise the unfortunate core of U.S.-China military-to-military (“mil-to-mil”) engagement. China’s harassment of the USNS Impeccable in 2009 and USSCowpens in 2013 are but the most prominent cases of its persistent belligerence in the South China Sea. This tactically aggressive behavior from the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) reflects a grander expansion strategy emanating from Beijing. From new Chinese passports with the infamous nine-dashed line, media trumpeting Chinese claims over Japanese-governed Senkaku Islands, and maritime occupation of Scarborough Shoal, China’s maritime expansion is the well-orchestrated foreign policy of the Chinese Communist Party through its national ministries.
Betting that war will not result, China is pushing the boundaries – literally – of its maritime claims, incrementally. American military analyst Robert Haddick calls the strategy “salami slicing,” or “the slow accumulation of small changes, none of which in isolation amounts to a casus belli, but which can add up over time to a significant strategic change” (p. 77). By building “facts on the ground” through occupation and declaration of new maritime territory, Beijing builds precedent and physical justification for Chinese claims. Beijing’s recent island construction and aggressive territorial incursions are the most recent events testing the will of the international community and United States. These events are not signals but rather dynamic action by Beijing to unilaterally dominate China’s near seas.
Read the full story at The Diplomat