By Ankit Panda
A U.S. Senate resolution condemns Chinese attempts to revise the status quo in the Asia-Pacific.
What do U.S. legislators think about China’s recent moves in the East and South China Seas? Well, we got a pretty good idea last Thursday when the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution in essence condemning China’s actions and ambitions in Asia. The resolution, which is primarily “aimed at altering China’s behavior toward U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region,” according to The Hill, is a reaction to China’s decision in November 2013 to unilaterally impose an air defense identification zone over a large swathe of the East China Sea where it currently disputes the sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands with Japan.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a co-sponsor of the resolution, was unequivocal about what he saw as the United States’ enduring interest in the status quo in the Asia-Pacific: “The United States is an Asia-Pacific nation and we have an abiding national security interest in the maintenance of regional stability, as recent events have demonstrated.” The resolution, also cosponsored by Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), makes sweeping statements on the status quo in the Asia-Pacific. It “condemns coercive and threatening actions or the use of force to impede freedom of operations in international airspace by military or civilian aircraft, to alter the status quo or to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region; [and] urges the Government of the People’s Republic of China to refrain from implementing the declared East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which is contrary to freedom of overflight in international airspace.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat