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| USS Cowpens (Image US Navy via Flickr) |
By James R. Holmes
China won the Cowpens / Liaoning encounter in the South China Sea. What lessons should the US draw?
So who won the December 5 encounter between the Aegis cruiser USS Cowpens and the ships escorting aircraft carrier Liaoning? Sad to say, methinks this round goes to China’s navy. So, evidently, does Beijing, which has struck an upbeat note since the press disclosed the near-collision last week. Magnanimity bespeaks comfort with the outcome.
Think about it. PLA Navy vessels barred Cowpens, one of the U.S. Navy’s premier surface combatants, from what Chinese spokesmen call an “inner defense layer” centered on Liaoning. Inner defense layer? Forsooth. This exclusion zone was a circle with a diameter at least 60 miles across. It spanned over 2,800 square miles. To use a yardstick wearisomely familiar to us Rhode Islanders, that’s over twice the area of our beloved Ocean State. After the American warship maneuvered radically to avoid colliding with a PLA Navy amphibious transport that crossed her bow at close quarters, officers on board the two ships reportedly conferred by radio. Cowpensthen left the proscribed area.
Here’s how Xinhua describes the encounter: “U.S. missile cruiser Cowpens, despite warnings from China’s aircraft carrier task group, broke into the Chinese navy’s drilling waters in the South China Sea, and almost collided with a Chinese warship nearby.” Get the cause/effect relationship being alleged here? American ship “breaks into” Chinese formation, as though its crew jimmied the lock on a gate. Clumsily, it almost hits a Chinese ship. American ship is warned to leave. American ship leaves. Score one for the forces of truth, justice, and the Chinese Communist way!!! That’s the tale Chinese officialdom is spinning: that the PLA Navy can sketch an area far larger than any naval formation, forbid others to enter that area, and drive off anyone uppity enough to intrude.
Read the full story at The Diplomat