The White House has a strong hand to play after successfully concluding talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
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Officials in the Philippines said that they have been told of the planned patrols in the last several days. If it truly wants to boost the progress that a few regional players have made so far in shelving the maritime disparities, instead of further complicating the South China Sea issues, it has to display a few sincerity to the global community. In recent decades, Washington has become increasingly focU.S.ed on the South China Sea, asserting free navigation in the regional waters is a core interest. Senator McCain said: ‘[not doing so] is a risky mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims’.
In a clear rebuff to China, the U.S. defense secretary, Ash Carter, said on Tuesday that the United States military would sail and fly wherever worldwide law allowed, including the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, after an annual two-day meeting, the U.S. and Australian defense and foreign ministers said they do not have a view on the legal arguments of the dispute.
The new Turnbull government isn’t going to get involved in a confrontation between the United States and Chinese navies in the South China Sea.
The United States and its Pacific ally Australia warned China that they remain committed to freedom of navigation in the waters of the South China Sea.
Within the next two weeks the Pentagon is expected to send U.S. Navy warships to the area that will steam past China’s artificial South China Sea islands in the first direct challenge to China’s claims in the region.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his visit to Washington on September 22, that Beijing has no intention of militarizing the islands. At one point, US officials said, the ships entered USA territorial waters, invoking a provision in maritime law that allows a warship to cross into another country’s maritime territory legally as long as the ships moved “expeditiously and continuously”.
Meanwhile, the official refuted rumours that the US had already made a final decision on the freedom of navigation within 12 nautical miles comprising the aforesaid artificial islands.
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In its 2015 conference hosted by Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur between August 1 and 6, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) voiced its objections to China’s reclamation projects across the South China Sea. But that interpretation conflicted with Beijing’s persistent history of forcefully opposing foreign surveillance ships and planes operating in and above its claimed EEZ, including its establishment of an ADIZ over contested parts of the East China Sea (reinforced by threatened “defensive emergency measures”) and its repeated confrontations with American, Filipino, and Vietnamese ships and American and Japanese military planes.
