China’s President, Xi Jinping, threatened war with the Philippines this week. The United States (US) said on Tuesday that it was ready to defend the Philippines if China continues with its invasion of the West Philippine Sea. The United States has warned China it will protect Philippine military forces from attacks in the South China Sea, according to a seventy-year-old mutual defense treaty.
Washington could promise to protect Philippine military forces, government vessels, and aircraft in the South China Sea, as long as Philippine forces did not behave provocatively. The Cyrus Vance letter echoes the words of Donald H. Rumsfeld, and it demonstrates that while Washington does not have any stance on who owns the crucial South China Sea, Philippine forces are nevertheless protected by the MDT.
With ambiguity and evasion failing, Washington needs to craft a response that meets Philippine expectations without preemptively binding Washington into a future conflict in the South China Sea. Ultimately, should tensions explode into violence in the crucial South China Sea, the formula adopted in the 1970s meant that Washington would have either had to abandon the Philippines or embrace conflict with China it otherwise wanted to avoid.
America might actually prefer to take that course, even if diplomatic skirmishes over the Spratly Islands continued to pit China against formal U.S. allies such as the Philippines provided, that is, China did not attempt to take over nearby sea lanes. Many American analysts have said that while the US should not worry too much about China’s conventional military power, it must recognize that Beijing, having watched the Gulf War on CNN, may be using asymmetrical warfare to threaten American interests in Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea.
China’s actions during the Korean War and the Vietnam War indicate CHINA does not take military action until it is threatened by an invasion near its borders, said Jay L. Batongbacal, the director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea at the University of the Philippines, in an e-mail. Despite its many weaknesses in the military establishment, China is a rising power that could one day present significant challenges to the United States and its allies in East Asia. China continues to intensify efforts to arbitrarily enforce its territorial ambitions.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has called on Beijing to abide by arbitration rules, while also underscoring that it is America’s responsibility to protect its treaty ally, the Philippines, if Filipino forces, ships, or aircraft are attacked in the West Philippine Sea. U.S. officials have assured their Philippine counterparts in several instances in recent years that they would honor treaty commitments if Philippine forces, ships, or aircraft were attacked in the disputed South China Sea, including by China. Mr. Blinken has made that point before, including during a phone call on April 8 with the Philippine foreign minister, in which the State Department said that it had reiterated the treaty application to the South China Sea.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is calling on Beijing to comply with the arbitration ruling, and that the US is obligated to defend its treaty ally, the Philippines, if its forces, vessels or aircraft come under attack in the disputed territory.
The statement was released on the sixth anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s (PCA) 2016 decision in The Hague under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) declaring that the Philippines has exclusive sovereign rights over the disputed islands in the South China Sea. “msn.com”
The statement was issued on the sixth anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)s ruling in 2016, under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which declared the Philippines has exclusive sovereign rights over the disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Permanent Court of Arbitrations (PCA) at The Hague has confirmed that the Philippines has sole sovereign rights in the South China Sea.
China last week reiterated that it does not accept a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that said Beijing is violating Manila’s economic sovereignty. China reiterated last week it does not accept the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which said Beijing is violating Manila’s economic sovereignty. Mr. Blinken issued his written statement to mark five years since the arbitration tribunal issued its ruling that rejected the sweeping Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, which cover the so-called nine-dash line, which is also disputed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The arbitral tribunal said that the Chinese claims were valid, that the court’s ruling was valid, and that the United States will assert its claims, including the claims made by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Under its One China policy, the U.S. has recognized China’s claims to Taiwan as part of China but has never officially recognized Chinese claims to Taiwan. For more than 70 years, the two sides were governed separately, but this has not stopped the Chinese ruling Communist Party from asserting the island as their own — though they never controlled it. The US has looked at these claims Philippine officials want to make up until now and decided the US has no claims of its own.
The South China Sea cannot be considered part of the US-ruled Philippines, but this does not mean that the Philippines cannot make claims on it for the Philippines when it is independent. If Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos wants to have the Reed Bank and the Spratly Islands included, Washington would put in the waffle clause this would create even more problems and confusion.
China is not likely to attack the Philippines over its sea detour, political analysts said on Sunday, playing down the likelihood of Russia’s war with Ukraine spilling over to Asia. China is threatening war after authorizing its navy vessels to shoot fishermen plying its traditional waters, a warning the Philippines has issued. China’s military said on Monday that it had driven off a US naval ship that it said had illegally entered Chinese waters near the Paracel Islands. China’s foreign ministry said earlier in the week that U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations, meant to flex American muscles, were jeopardizing the stability of the region.
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We will never go to war against China until the day comes that we have a sane and rational political leader. That can’t be found on the left, which means that the only thing the left will do, right now, is run their mouth while giving up everything it can to weaken the US.
Some might call that treason. I know I do.
Under the current political stolen leadership, the only war that can be fought is against its own citizen, and that is , and has been in full swing since around 2009, with a too brief respite for four years, then the escalation.
I totally agree with you. Another attempt will be made to steal the election, even if Trump decides not to run (Unlikely). Any Republican that runs against the left in the General election is a threat to their agenda.
Mr Berwind wrote:
When the day comes that we have a sane and rational political leader, we will not go to war with China for anything less than a direct attack on the United States.
China’s nuclear arsenal is not as large as that of Russia, but it is still quite sufficient to kill millions and millions of American citizens.
I wasn’t considering anyone’s nuclear arsenal. Only the bit about sane and rational. The current leadership is giving everything to China, so it would never go to war against China. That battle was fought in the 2020 election.
If we are to cower over the size of one’s nuclear arsenal, there is no reason to ever go to war with anyone, again. And that ain’t happening. Politics is involved,
It’s always necessary to size up one’s enemy, but not just based on how many nukes they have. If that is the direction to take, then we might as well continue letting Democrats get elected and continue to give up our sovereignty.
However, the nuclear side of the equation does need consideration, just not to the point of emasculating ourselves.
If we fold every time somebody threatens to nuke us if they don’t get their way, we might as well hoist the Chinese red flag over the Capitol right now and get it over with.
Then again, how would that be much different than what we have right now under their puppet Regime?
“When the day comes that we have a sane and rational political leader, we will not go to war with China for anything less than a direct attack on the United States.”
That’s the way it should be. With our current leadership, it is impossible to even go there because we are giving China everything it needs. We need to be at war with our leadership, instead, until it is gone and replaced with sane and reasonable leaders. That’s all I meant.
If we remain on our current course, none of this will even matter.
When we have a transgender Assistant Secretary for Health appearing in an Admiral’s uniform, with a ‘non-binary’ Deputy Assistant Nuclear Energy Secretary in drag appearing together at the residence of the French ambassador for Bastille Day, just how seriously do you think Xi Jinping will take any threats from the United States?
Under this corrupt illegitimate Regime, the only threat I see to them is that they’ll stroke out from LAUGHING so hard at us and the puppets we let them install, “President” Bernie Lomax in particular.
No, I take that back, even the deanimated Mr. Lomax would have made a better POTUS than Chicom Pedo Joe. My apologies, Bernie.
Those two, and many others, who were placed in the administration, were placed there to mock those who know they stole the last election. We know what happened, even if under current conditions we can’t prove it to a leftist based court system.
Does it really matter what Xi Jinping thinks when we are being ruled over. Of course it does, but what can we do about it, other than wait on some red wave coming to the rescue, when we know what happened the last time? It only matters what Xi Jinping thinks when we have someone responsible who can carry the torch of freedom for our country.
Puts us in quite the dilemma.
Our problem is not Xi Jinping, but Joe Jinping and his administration. If we don’t deal with that, and soon, it really doesn’t matter about the drag fag and the tranny fag, because they are symbols of mockery and are there only to show how much the left hates us and our country.
To date, the only people Joe Jinping has threatened has been the American people. We’re the ones not taking him seriously, I think.
If we can’t fix our domestic problem, Joe Jinping Biden, why would we worry over a foreign enemy thousands of miles away and separated by an ocean? Our problem is completely domestic because we are being ruled over by children, evil children.