By Zachary Keck
Last week I wrote a piece arguing that a strong balancing coalition against China would be more likely to deter Chinese aggression than provoke it. In that article, I briefly mentioned that to avoid antagonizing Beijing, the U.S. and its allies could form a military coalition around the mission of upholding certain principles like freedom of navigation, rather than containing a certain state like China. Since this idea was only marginally related to the main thrust of that article, I only mentioned it in passing. However, I feel the point has enough merit to consider in greater detail.
Building a military coalition or alliance around a principle like freedom of navigation would be sensible for the U.S. and its allies in a number of ways. First, support for principles like freedom of navigation and opposition to using naval force or coercion to settle territorial disputes is broadly popular in the region. Indeed, I cannot think of any state that would publicly express opposition to either of these principles. China, of course, has warned the U.S. against using maritime security as an excuse to provoke it, but it has usually in the same breath affirmed its support for freedom of navigation. At most there are disagreements over how these principles should be enforced, and by whom, not over whether they are worth upholding or not.
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