The Navy is preparing to send a surface ship inside the 12-nautical-mile
territorial limit China claims for its man-made island chain, an action
that could take place within days but awaits final approval from the
Obama administration, according to military officials who spoke to Navy
Times.
Plans to send a warship through the contested space have
been rumored since May, but three Pentagon officials who spoke to Navy
Times on background to discuss future operations say Navy officials
believe approval of the mission is imminent.
If approved, it would be the first time since 2012 that the U.S. Navy has directly challenged China's claims to the islands' territorial limits.
The
land reclamation projects in the vicinity of the Spratly Islands have
been the focus of increasing tensions between China and the United
States along with its regional allies, including the Philippines, since
reports of the land reclamation project began surfacing in
2013. However, the U.S. and other nations have disputed the legitimacy
of the islands built by China in what is viewed as an act of
regional aggression.
A spokesman for the National Security Council
deferred questions regarding the Navy's plans to the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, but drew attention to President Obama's remarks
before the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 28, where he said the U.S. has
"an interest in upholding the basic principles of freedom of navigation
and the free flow of commerce, and in resolving disputes through
international law, not the law of force."
OSD spokesman Cmdr. Bill
Urban declined to comment on future operations, but referred to Defense
Secretary Ash Carter's comments from Sept. 1, when he said that the
"United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law
allows, as we do all around the world."
The news of the pending
maneuver comes just a day after Pacific Fleet boss Adm. Scott Swift told
a maritime conference in Australia that "some nations" were behaving in
a manner inconsistent with international law, a clear reference to the
ongoing dispute with China.
"It's my sense that some nations view
freedom of the seas as up for grabs, as something that can be taken down
and redefined by domestic law or by reinterpreting international law,"
Swift said, according to a report by Reuters. "Some nations continue to
impose superfluous warnings and restrictions on freedom of the seas in
their exclusive economic zones and claim territorial water rights that
are inconsistent with (the United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea). This trend is particularly egregious in contested waters."
In
September, David Shear, assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific
security, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. Navy
hadn't steamed or flown within 12 nautical miles of the islands since
2012, which is before China's island construction
project began in earnest. Six nations with South China Sea coasts have
competing claims to the territory being staked out by China's island
building.
Later that day, House Armed Services Committee member
Randy Forbes, R-Va. sent a letter signed by a bipartisan group
of 29 House members calling the island-building project a threat to
freedom of navigation and the peaceful international order in place
since the end of World War II.
"In order to deter these actions
and prevent further erosion of stability in the region, the United
States must make clear that it is fully committed to maintaining freedom
of navigation in the South China Sea," the letter read, calling for a
"highly symbolic" passage of Navy ships and aircraft past the islands to
send a message to China.
When reports that the U.S. was planning
to challenge China's island claims surfaced in May, a Chinese foreign
ministry spokesperson urged "relevant countries to refrain from taking
risky and provocative action," according to a report in the Wall Street
Journal. Foreign Policy reported Oct. 2 that U.S. officials were planning a tougher stance in the South China Sea, including stepped up freedom of navigation patrols with ships and aircraft in the vicinity of the islands.
Bryan
Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that passage through
territorial waters is a routine Navy operation typically used to build a
legal case under international law for freedom of navigation in
international waters, and right of innocent passage within territorial
waters.
Innocent passage, the right of a state to pass through the
territorial waters of another, is usually conducted with little
fanfare. But what makes the planned passage through China's newly
claimed territorial waters significant is that the administration had
previously prohibited the Navy from doing it in the Spratly Islands,
Clark said.
"If you act like they have a legal 12-mile limit, even
though the U.S. has said it doesn't recognize it, you are tacitly
acknowledging those claims as legitimate," Clark said, adding that even
if the claims were legitimate, the U.S. would have the right to pass
through under the right of innocent passage.
The Chinese
government claimed the same right when its navy's ships passed within 12
nautical miles of the U.S.-held Aleutian Islands off Alaska In
September, after a joint exercise with the Russian military.
The
U.S. and China's neighbors in the region are concerned that China is
creating military installations on the islands. In June, images surfaced
of a nearly complete 10,000-foot-long airstrip on one of the islands,
big enough to accommodate military aircraft.
China claims nearly
all of the South China Sea, a position that has put it at loggerheads
with its neighbors and prompted countries in the region, including
erstwhile enemies such as Vietnam, to turn to the U.S. to offset the
newly aggressive China.
China's actions have also prompted renewed
military-to-military relations with the Philippines, more than two
decades after the U.S. was kicked out of the country following a wave of
anti-American sentiment inside the former U.S. colony.
An
agreement signed last year that allows U.S. forces to use Philippine
military facilities has been a signature accomplishment in the Obama
administration's strategic pivot to Asia.
Source: Navy Times.
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