Washington maintains the Navy has the right to sail or fly by the series of artificial islands that China is outfitting with military equipment.
Protesters brandish placards at a rally in front of the Chinese Consulate in Manila, Phillippines. | Getty
Some U.S. naval commanders are at odds with the Obama administration over whether to sail Navy ships right into a disputed area in the South China Sea — a debate that pits some military leaders who want to exercise their freedom of navigation against administration officials and diplomats trying to manage a delicate phase in U.S.-China relations.
The Pentagon has repeatedly maintained it reserves the right to sail or fly by a series of artificial islands that China is outfitting with military equipment. The Navy won’t say what it has or hasn’t done, but military officials and congressional hawks want the U.S. to make a major demonstration by sending warships within 12 miles of the artificial islands and make clear to China that the U.S. rejects its territorial claims.
By not doing so, they charge, Washington is tacitly accepting China’s destabilizing moves, which are seen by U.S. allies in the region such as Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam as highly threatening.
“We continue to restrict our Navy from operating within a 12 nautical mile zone of China’s reclaimed islands, a dangerous mistake that grants de facto recognition of China’s man-made sovereignty claims,” Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told POLITICO.
Sources in the military and within the administration acknowledge the difference of opinion privately, but would not go on the record to discuss the differences between Navy leaders and the administration. The internal debate within the U.S. government comes as leaders of Pacific nations, including Secretary of State John Kerry and his his Chinese counterpart, are set to convene for a regional security conference next week in Malaysia and ahead of the state visit to the United States in September of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The dispute is more than just a naval territorial dispute — there are global economic implications if China claims ownership of this part of the sea, which sees trillions in goods shipped between Asia and the rest of the globe.
It centers on a group of man-made islands in the South China Sea that China has created by dumping thousands of tons of sand on coral reefs and shoals. Over the last 18 months, Chinese engineers have created about 3,000 acres of new land, the Pentagon says, where they have deployed artillery, built aircraft runways and buildings and positioned radars and other equipment. This week, the chief of the Philippine military, General Hernando Iriberri, told journalists in Manila it was investigating reports China had reclaimed three more reefs in the South China Sea.
China claims it has exclusive control over waters hundreds of miles off its coast, and U.S. officials say Beijing believes the man-made islands strengthen its claim to the disputed Spratly Islands chain, which China and several Southeast Asian countries claim as their own.
“China is changing the facts on the ground, literally, by essentially building man-made islands on top of coral reefs rocks and shoals,” Adm. Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said last week at the Aspen Security Forum. “I believe that China’s actions to enforce its claims within the South China Sea could have far-reaching consequences for our own security and economy, by disrupting the international rules and norms that have supported the global community for decades,” Harris warned.
China shot back on Thursday, with a Ministry of Defense spokesman saying it is the United States that is “militarizing” the South China Sea.
“China is extremely concerned at the United States’ pushing of the militarization of the South China Sea region,” the spokesman said, according to Reuters. “Recently they have further increased military alliances and their military presence, frequently holding joint drills.”
The U.S. Navy has so far been deliberately ambiguous about where it has operated in the South China Sea, not responding to questions about where exactly it has operated. When the warship USS Fort Worth encountered a Chinese vessel near the contested Spratly Islands in May, for example, officials declined to say exactly where.
Yet it is Harris, the top U.S. military commander in the region, who in private has been one of the biggest proponents of sailing U.S. warships within 12 miles of the islands, according to a government official directly familiar with his thinking. Harris’ staff did not respond to a request for an interview, but a senior Pentagon official who asked not to be named confirmed the differing viewpoints and Harris’ — and the wider Pacific Command’s — position.
The admiral signaled his view when he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in December, telling lawmakers in answers to a series of written questions that “it is essential for the U.S. Navy to maintain its presence and assert its freedom of navigation and overflight rights in the South China Sea in accordance with customary international law.”
The artificial islands have added to a broader disagreement between Washington and Beijing over freedom of navigation. The United States and most other countries, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, maintain that a coastal nation has the right to regulate economic activities such as fishing and oil exploration within a 200-mile economic exclusionary zone and that it cannot regulate foreign military forces except within 12 nautical miles off its shores. China, however, has insisted it can regulate economic and military activities out 200 nautical miles.
But in the case of the artificial islands, China has no rights at all, in the view of a senior Pentagon lawyer, who last month urged the U.S. to “not go wobbly on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.”
Raul Pedrozo, a former legal adviser to the Pacific Command now a deputy general counsel at the Department of Defense, maintained in a journal article published by the East Asia Forum at Australian National University that “man-made islands constructed on submerged features are not entitled to a 12- nautical mile territorial sea. Therefore, US ships and aircraft can legally conduct operations within 12 [nautical miles] of the feature. “
Pedrozo, who said he was providing his personal views and not those of the Department of Defense, concluded his article with a vow.
“The U.S. will not acquiesce in unilateral acts designed to restrict the rights and freedoms of the international community.”
More than $5 trillion worth of international trade, from Middle East oil bound for Asian markets to children’s toys bound for Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., pass through the South China Sea each year. If China can restrict the passage of ships through what today are considered international waters, that could cause shockwaves for the world economy, U.S. officials warn.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter tried to illustrate this point on a visit to Singapore in May, when he took a flight with reporters over the vital Strait of Malacca, which was crowded with ships traveling between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. On that visit, Carter vowed that the U.S. would continue to observe freedom of navigation everywhere it believes law permits its ships and aircraft to travel.
He took direct aim at China’s man-made island plan. “The United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, as U.S. forces do all over the world. America, alongside its allies and partners in the regional architecture, will not be deterred from exercising these rights — the rights of all nations. After all, turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international air or maritime transit.”
A satellite view of a Chinese South China Sea land reclamation project. | Getty
Around the same time, the Navy drew heavy TV news coverage when it sent a P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft on a flight near the disputed artificial islands — with CNN reporter Jim Sciutto on board.
True to form, Chinese air controllers warned the American crew on the radio to turn away from what they called a restricted military zone. The Navy released its own full-length video of the flight, which showed some of the improvements on one island and the crew members listening to the Chinese warnings.
A Pentagon spokesman insisted that the military’s policy remains unchanged.
“The U.S. military has, and will continue to operate consistent with the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea in the South China Sea,” said Navy Cmdr. William Urban. “Freedom of navigation and overflight is a linchpin of security, peace and commerce in the Pacific and no claimant should impede lawful activities by others.”
But asked about the internal discussion about how to address the 12-nautical mile area around China’s artificial islands, he demurred.
“We’re not going to discuss specific parameters of the freedom of navigation operations we conduct, or the internal U.S. government decision-making process for these operations.”
The National Security Council also declined to discuss the dispute or outline the White House’s view, referring questions to the Pentagon.
But the Obama administration is increasingly seen as eager to avoid a confrontation by actually doing so — at least publicly — and Republicans are trying to pressure President Obama ahead of the Chinese leader’s visit to more aggressively assert himself in the face of China’s controversial behavior.
On Thursday, Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, a freshman Republican on the Armed Services panel, pressed Obama’s nominee for chief of naval operations on the issue at his confirmation hearing.
“There seems to be some confusion in the policy,” Sullivan told Adm. John Richardson.
“The administration looks to clearly be sitting on this policy decision, ” added a congressional aide, “because it would be a bad news story ahead of the Xi visit in September. At what point are our efforts to gain Chinese goodwill and contributions to the international system upended by their very blatant effort to undermine the rules-based order in Asia?
“We need a robust freedom of navigation plan that includes joint patrols and exercises across the first-island chain, and specifically in the South China Sea,” the aide added.
But at the same time U.S. military leaders are advocating for something else — for the U.S. Senate to ratify the UN Law of the Sea treaty that it repeatedly cites as as the international framework for navigation of the high seas.
“We undermine our leverage by not signing up to the same rule book by which we are asking other countries to accept,” Gen. Joe Dunford, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate earlier this month.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/barack-obama-administration-navy-pentagon-odds-south-china-sea-120865.html
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