By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
WASHINGTON: “To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape,” Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago. It’s a stratagem – often called the “golden bridge” – that the US and its allies would do well to remember tomorrow morning, when a UN tribunal ruling on disputes in the South China Sea will almost certainly deliver China a legal and political defeat. Chinese nationalists will stridently demand retaliation. We need to give Xi Jinping room to deescalate instead without losing face.
“How China reacts in the near term is going to depend in part on what actions the US and the Philippines take,” said Bonnie Glaser, China scholar at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “The US should strike a balance between calling on China to comply with the ruling and putting pressure on it to do so, while at the same time leaving China diplomatic space…to wriggle out of the corner it has put itself in.”
The US should continue military patrols in the region, including Freedom Of Navigation Operations through disputed waters, “but they don’t have to be publicly announced,” Glaser said. That stands in stark contrast to several recent, high-profile FONOPs much discussed in the media and in Congress.
Timing matters too, said Jeffrey Hornung, a fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA. “Of course you’re going to want to enforce the claim at some point,” he said, “but if they ruling comes out 0500 Eastern time tomorrow and they leave port at 0600, then we’re jumping the gun a little bit.”
“The best the US can do is really not gloat (and) thump its chest,” said Hornung.
Read the full story at Breaking Defense