Here’s a bite of some dense global politics if anyone is interested.
So big news of the day, the US ambassador has been called to China to explain actions taken, militarily inside of what China claims to be their national, territorial waters.
Long story short, we “warned” China to cease its creation of man-made islands in the disputed Spratly archipelago. This area has around $5T worth of commerce travel through it yearly and nearly all of the surrounding nations, many of whom are our allies, want exclusive trade rights and some claim to this economic zone at the center of the South Seas. They (China) didn’t stop building, and yesterday/today (depending on timezone) we sent a Destroyer warship into the territorial waters surrounding the islands. Now China is claiming we violated their sovereignty and we will have to wait to see how they will push back.
So those are the basics. Going to go in depth below the fold.
Nations are afforded a level of sovereignty for their territorial waters, that designation has been set at 12 miles from the coast of their nation at low tide. That sovereignty means that the access to those waters can be highly restricted by the ruling nation. This allows control of trade, resource management and acquisition, and military independence over the region.
In opposition to that are “international waters” which are areas outside of the territorial zone and exclusive economic zones (more on that later). These have little to no restrictions to access by military, trade, or private vessels, and are standardly governed by an internationally agreed upon doctrine or jurisdiction.
Somewhere between the two are Exclusive Economic Zones. These are regions which lay outside of the 12 mile territorial water mark, but are economically controlled, and militarily patrolled by a sovereign nation (or group of nations in agreement). Said nation(s) retain exclusive rights to the extrusion of resources from the Zone, and may have rights to regulate trade, business, or finance related to that area.
Now this is the important part. Exclusive Economic Zones extend 200 nautical miles from a nation's shoreline and up to 350 miles on the ocean floor for resource acquisition.
In the specific case of the contested South Seas (hereafter referred to as “the Sea”) - meaning the area between China, Vietnam, The Malay Archipelago, the Philippines, and Taiwan - the ownership of the waters, or the rights afforded to the surrounding nations, has been a point of conflict throughout modern history. Each of the surrounding nations has some claim to Exclusive Economic Zones which overlaps with another nation’s claim.
China however, has laid claim to nearly the entire region, stating that it’s historical control over the region provides it with the ability to count the two major archipelago’s in the Sea, the Spratly and the Paracel islands, as its sovereign territory, vastly expanding its coastal territorial waters to cover nearly 80% of the disputed region.
The surrounding nations’ claims to the area revolve around “dwellings” on the islands which are almost entirely occupied and managed by military forces, and similar historic claims to sovereignty.
Now, in 2014 (and prior, since 2012, with far less international attention), China began sending drilling platforms, escorted by naval forces, to sites around the Sea, conducting one-to-two-month long exploratory drillings. This cumulated in the Haiyang Shiyou standoff in May of 2014 where Vietnamese Navy and private vessels attempted to disrupt the drilling in the Paracel islands, claiming that the archipelago was in Vietnamese territorial waters. Video of the Chinese naval ships ramming and sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat led to protests and riots in Vietnam. China shortly thereafter ceased exploratory drilling in the Sea.
And then China began construction of the man-made islands. Well, to be more accurate, began dredging operations to expand the existing islands in order to construct actual settlements upon them. Some of the islands have been expanded by as much as 2000 acres and have airstrips and harbors being constructed.
This would seem to suggest that during the exploratory drilling, China uncovered massive amounts of fossil fuels, either oil or gas, in the Sea, but understands that without a firmer claim, the highly contested nature of the Exclusive Economic Zones make it impossible to do any kind of viable resource extraction without the work being highly disrupted by other regional powers.
Our allies in the region are understandably opposed to this, and we (the US) are as well. Despite the fact that China is, on paper, our ally, we are most definitely engaged in a struggle against them for economic supremacy. We would rather our allies in the region be strengthened by the acquisition of these fuels than allow China to monopolize them, and if that fails, then we would (it appears) even be accepting of the fuels remaining undisturbed for now so that there is less potential for China to outpace us as the leading economic power in the world.
Added to this is the fact that we have interest, through our economic allies, in the $5T worth of yearly trade moving through the Sea, and there is a clear reason for us to oppose the expanse of China’s sphere of influence and control in the region.
In the last several months we have warned China not to continue its construction of these islands. We have made our opposition public, and have even published photographs taken from high altitude aircraft showing the dredging operations. The intent of this has been to inspire some unified dissent from our allies in the region to confront China about its operations on the world stage. But these nations have not acted and have not even made any political movement to influence the cause of events. Rather they have appeared to wait for us to back up our words with action.
Yesterday/Today (timezones again) the US 7th fleet sent the USS Lassen to the territorial waters claimed by China. The vessel entered the 12 mile boundary of the territorial waters claimed by China and was clearly intended to be a symbolic show of force. China has called this move an affront to their sovereignty and has called on the US ambassador to explain the actions.
So that’s that.
Now we wait to see who is bluffing in this game of high-stakes poker.
A dangerous scenario would be for both sides to continue upping the proverbial ante, creating a miniature escalation of force which would serve no purpose but to drive a wedge between Chinese and US diplomacy.
Right now we need mediation by either other regional powers, working in unison, or by the UN calling for a cessation of actions in the region.