By DEAN CHENG
Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who had expressed serious reservations about Rex Tillerson, President Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of State, said Sunday afternoon they would vote for him, pretty much assuring his elevation. The most combustible part of Tillerson’s testimony was about how to handle a rising China’s actions in the South and East China Seas — comments which White House spokesman Sean Spicer seemed to echo — so I asked Dean Cheng, one of the top experts on the Chinese military, to parse Tillerson’s comments and give readers a sense of what should be done. Read on. The Editor.
During his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, nominee Rex Tillerson compared Chinese island building to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and said the United States needed to send a “clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed.”
Not surprisingly, these comments aroused a heated response from Beijing, which reiterated its claims to the South China Sea. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has ignored a legal finding by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague which found that China’s Nine Dash Line provides no legal basis for its claims in the South China Sea.
If Tillerson meant to signal that the United States will blockade the various artificial islands, this would constitute a most serious threat. A blockade is an act of war under international law. But just as President Kennedy chose to invoke a “quarantine” during the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than a blockade, there are presumably other means to affect Chinese efforts to secure the South China Sea short of ringing the islands with US Navy ships.
Read the full story at Breaking Defense