By Laurent THOMET
A spate of deadly collisions involving US Navy warships in Asian waters has provided a propaganda windfall to rivals like China and given already rattled regional allies further reason to fret, analysts say.
Four accidents this year alone, including two fatal ones in two months, resulted in the dismissal this week of the commander of the iconic US Seventh Fleet -- the centrepiece of the American military presence in Asia.
The timing could hardly be worse, with the Japan-based fleet at the heart of ongoing US efforts to project an image of military strength and effectiveness in the face of threats from nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.
The latest incident left the guided-missile destroyer, USS John McCain limping into port in Singapore on Monday with a gaping gash in its hull following a pre-dawn collision with an oil tanker that left 10 of its crew feared dead.
Just days before, the same ship had taken part in a "freedom of navigation exercise" -- sailing close to a contested island in the South China Sea in a show of strength to challenge Beijing's territorial claims there.
The incident, and a similar collision involving another warship off Japan in June that left seven dead, has been seized on by China as an illustration of US military overreach and incompetence.
"It's a lot of good propaganda for the Chinese," James Char, a regional security specialist at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told AFP.
It comes as "China is trying to tell the region, 'you cannot count on the US for your security needs'," he said.
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