Beijing Tests American Resolve With Latest Aggression in South China Sea

Escalating clashes this week between Communist Chinese paramilitary forces and the Philippines in the South China Sea are likely escalating in tandem with deepening American involvement in the Iran war, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute says.Bryan Clark, a former United States Navy submarine officer, says the ongoing Chinese pressure campaign that ramped up to physical violence against a Philippine sailor on Monday may be a Chinese test of American resolve.“I think that part of it is China’s looking at the US as being distracted and maybe is looking at this as an opportunity to take advantage of US efforts being focused elsewhere,” said Bryan Clark, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.China and the Philippines are skirmishing over partially submerged coral reefs west of the Philippines, claimed by that nation and within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. They’re Beijing’s latest target in a construction campaign in the South China Sea where the Chinese move in on disputed reefs and rocky outcrops.“There’s been this effort by the Chinese to create a series of military installations on these reefs by piloting a bunch of gravel and sand and dredged material on top of them, and then paving it over,” Mr. Clark said.On Monday, Chinese forces in small boats approached Philippine sailors near the Second Thomas Shoal and struck one in the head with a wooden baton. On Thursday, two Chinese vessels drove back a Philippine ship that approached the Scarborough Shoal.The United States and the Philippines have a mutual defense treaty, meaning the American military is required to defend the Philippines in the event of a foreign attack. But it’s unclear whether ship rammings, water cannon cascades and fisticuffs by Chinese forces amount to the level of an armed attack.“This is part of their gray zone warfare,” Mr. Clark said of the Chinese. “They use these non-military forces to gain control over an area or establish and basically occupy a maritime area and then establish control over and then just sort of act like they own it. But they never use their military so it never comes across as a military attack.”Top American officials were quick to condemn China.“The whole world saw it, and it’s disturbing,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said while at a summit in the Philippine capital Thursday. “We have a role, and we are not going to abandon our allies. We’ve made that abundantly clear.”On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio met with the Philippine president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to reaffirm the “ironclad” military alliance between the two countries.“They underscored the importance of upholding freedoms of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea,” a State Department spokesman, Tommy Pigott, said, “and noted the recent 10th anniversary of the July 2016 Arbitral Award in the South China Sea, confirming that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea.”Mr. Marcos and President Trump spoke by phone on Thursday.The Chinese try to gain de facto control over shoals and atolls using two distinct groups: a Chinese naval militia made up of deputized sailors and fishermen, and China’s Coast Guard. Both entities are theoretically separate from China’s massive military.“And that’s why the mutual defense clause of the US-Philippine treaty may not come into play because this is arguably an economic dispute between two neighboring countries as opposed to military attack on the Philippines by China,” Mr. Clark said.As more American naval and air power heads to the Middle East, United States Coast Guard assets have sped to the South China Sea, Mr. Clark said. But he warned that American military assets in the area may only exacerbate an already tense situation.“I think for the US it’s more of a reputational problem,” Mr. Clark said. “China’s been pushing the Philippines around. The Philippines are a treaty ally of the United States. If the US doesn’t come to the aid of the Philippines, the question is: are US security guarantees credible anymore? It starts to erode US credibility with regard to its other allies in the region like the Australians or the Japanese.”Mr. Marcos summoned the Chinese ambassador at Manila to officially protest China’s actions near the Second Thomas Shoal. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned the Philippines of “bitter consequences” if the nation does not accede to Chinese claims.“Regrettably, whenever China and the Philippines are about to engage in dialogue, certain forces in the Philippines — particularly some in the military and law enforcement agencies — deliberately create incidents to undermine its progress,” Mr. Wang said. “These individuals do not have the well-being of the Filipino people at heart.”Messrs. Wang and Rubio also met Wednesday for 90 minutes as part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference at Manila. Mr. Rubio said the two top diplomats discussed Taiwan and the planned September visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States.One day later, China began two days of limited live-fire naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing Tests American Resolve With Latest Aggression in South China Sea

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