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| Image: Flickr User - Official U.S. Navy Page |
By Ankit Panda
What does the U.S. Navy’s first freedom of navigation operation near a Chinese man-made island really mean?
The past 24 hours have kept the South China Sea at the top of the international news cycle. Leaks from senior U.S. officials on Monday noted that the U.S. Navy was about to begin long-awaited freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) near China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea. Barely eight hours after those reports surfaced, we received confirmation that the USS Lassen, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, accompanied by a P-8A Poseidon and P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft, transited within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands. Subi is one of seven Spratly features where China has, over roughly the past 14 to 16 months, carried out extensive island-building and construction activities. Satellite imagery published by The Diplomat in early September 2015 suggests that China is building a 3 kilometer airstrip on Subi.
The Lassen‘s operation has kicked off a new era in the fraught and increasingly crowded maritime space of the South China Sea. In what follows, I outline a few important takeaways from Tuesday’s operation and what South China Sea watchers at The Diplomat should look out for in the South China Sea now that the United States has shown that it is willing to take on China’s excessive maritime claims in the Spratlys head-on.
Read the full story at The Diplomat