Yesterday, an American destroyer delivered another challenge to Chinese claims in the South China Sea. USS William P Lawrence sailed within 12 miles of Fiery Cross Reef, where Chinese engineers have created a 700 acre artificial island over the last year and a half. More, from Neal Conan in the Pacific News Minute.
Tuesday's operation marks the third time since last October that Navy destroyers approached Chinese occupied islands… twice now in the Spratleys, off the coast of the Philippines and once in the Paracels, to the north and west, closer to Vietnam. China's foreign ministry described this incident, like the others, as an illegal intrusion. China's defense ministry said that two of its fighters and three warships expelled the American vessel; a statement said "It once again demonstrates that China's installation of defensive facilities on the Nansha Islands" (China's name for the Spratleys) "is totally reasonable and very necessary indeed."
On a visit to Vietnam, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel told reporters that what the Navy calls freedom of navigation operations reinforce US arguments that international waters must be open to all. "If the world's most powerful navy cannot sail where international law permits," he asked rhetorically, "then what happens to the ships of smaller countries?"
President Obama will visit Vietnam on his upcoming trip to the Far East...the operation also comes ahead of a ruling by an UN court on Philippine claims that China illegally seized parts of the Spratleys. In the just completed Philippine presidential campaign, president elect Roderigo Duterte, issued different statements on the dispute with China, but also pronounced himself a socialist, skeptical of growing military ties to the United States.
