By Joseph A. Bosco
Continued inaction can have unintended consequences.
In an ill-advised abundance of caution, the Obama administration may be establishing a dangerous precedent and setting the stage for an unnecessary confrontation with China in the South China Sea.
The issue is China’s artificial island-building and militarization, and its entirely unfounded maritime sovereignty claims based on those manmade “land features.” China’s actions are directly contrary to the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, which it has signed but whose provisions it flouts. (Conversely, the U.S. has not ratified UNCLOS, but honors its standards as consonant with customary international law.)
China’s excessive maritime claims are precisely the kind of unilateral actions the U.S. Navy’s Freedom of Navigation (FON) program was designed to counter. Periodically, the Navy sends ships through international waters unlawfully claimed by one coastal nation or another in order to preclude any misunderstanding regarding universal navigational rights or any semblance of acquiescence in the offending nation’s claims.
The principle applies as well to the right of overflight in international airspace where China and others have tried to exclude U.S. aircraft from conducting normal reconnaissance missions that are clearly outside the country’s 12-mile territorial limits. U.S. aircraft routinely conduct such flights despite those objections.
Similarly, when Beijing unilaterally declared an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, Washington immediately asserted its overflight rights by dispatching (unarmed) B-52s through the space. (Unfortunately, it diluted its message by simultaneously advising U.S. civilian flights to comply with China’s notification demands.)
Read the full story at The Diplomat