This would be especially true of any U.S. aircraft carrier that happened to be in the theater, since it would be far too valuable to leave in such an indefensible position.

It could miscalculate, provoking a violent conflict with the United States. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which the United States would be seriously considering kinetic strikes on Chinese bases in the South China Sea that would not also involve fighting in Northeast Asia. Unless the Chinese happened to pick a fight when U.S. forces were engaged in a major exercise like Balikatan in the Philippines, the closest U.S. ground-based combat aircraft would be in Okinawa and Guam, approximately 1,300 and 1,500 nautical miles away, respectively.

A particular style of Christmas card has been in vogue for the past 20 years, in which the traditional Holy Family is displaced by the sender’s family looking, if not quite holy, then certainly very good. When the United States took possession of the Philippines as the result of the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Washington also assumed control over Scarborough Shoal and Mischief Reef. Most of those who follow the South China Sea most closely see China’s artificial island bases as major gamechangers in any future Sino–U.S. As Thomas Shugart, then a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, once pointed out, most of the District of Columbia inside the I-495 beltway could fit inside the lagoon at Mischief Reef.

China can decide which path it wants to go down but, whatever Beijing’s decision, it’s crucial Washington play the same game. These are external links and will open in a new window. The Democrat-led House Wednesday passed on partisan lines a bill that would force companies to disclose their business transactions with manufacturers located in Xinjiang, a Chinese province where the communist government has interned more than 1 million Uighur Muslims. Assuming it was the first mover in a conflict, it would be able to deploy combat aircraft rapidly to the airfields in the Spratlys, instantly establishing air dominance in the theater. For this reason, the United States is right to continue to use its navy to ensure freedom of passage through international waters, much as it did in 1981 with the Gulf of Sidra under former President Ronald Reagan and the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf in subsequent years. At 140m long, it's the biggest ship of its kind in China and - according to the designers - in Asia. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official. By George Friedman.

The timing could be a coincidence, says Mr Neill, but it is worth remembering the considerable tension South China Sea activity can generate.

But China also recognizes that its strategy might fail. These should include combat aircraft at Basa Air Base on Luzon and Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa to contest Chinese air dominance over the South China Sea. "The one that's really focussing people's minds is Scarborough Shoal. And given current American force posture in the region, it would be prohibitively costly for the United States to neutralize those outposts during the early stages of a conflict. And much of the infrastructure has been hardened, including China’s missile shelters, larger hangars, and buried ammunition depots. This answer provoked enough of a stir among conference attendees that I took to Twitter to see what fellow South China Sea watchers and security experts thought. China and the United States have agreed to substantially reduce the massive trade imbalance between the two countries, according to a joint statement released over the weekend.

China has constructed 72 fighter jet hangars at its three airbases in the Spratlys — Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi Reefs — along with another 16 on Woody Island in the Paracels. It will make clear to Southeast Asian partners that a security relationship with the United States cannot safeguard their interests in the face of a rising China and will thereby undercut the rationale for governments like the Philippines and Singapore to support the U.S. military presence in the region. When the United States granted the Philippines their full independence on July 4, 1946, and withdrew, the U.S. transferred Scarborough Shoal and Mischief Reef to the Philippines. Since the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads, the postal department has been known mainly for its letter carriers who, as the motto goes, can’t be dissuaded from their tasks by snow, rain, heat, nor gloom of night. Every launch would put them at some risk.
This ship "has been launched with a lot of fanfare and has been called the 'magic island-maker' in Chinese media. This confirmed a worrying disconnect.

By claiming its new bases are islands, China not only claims a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea around each one, but also a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone.

It should also push for more opportunities to deploy combat aircraft to defense cooperation sites as part of bilateral exercises, as American F-16s were for the first time at Basa last year. The vessel has a highly symbolic name: Tian Kun Hao: a legendary enormous fish which can turn into a mythical bird. China, however, has cared little for international law or tradition; rather, it embraces only the notion that might makes right. The islands China has built so far are located on a shallow continental shelf, with an average depth of around 650ft. It’s the slow motion fuse that poses the greatest threat both to freedom of navigation and international law: China’s conversion of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea into airfields and military bases. That is, to accept stalemate rather than victory. Anything else sent into the theater — long-range bombers from Guam, surface ships, etc. But for several weeks at least — time that would be critical in a Taiwan contingency, for instance — they would pay huge dividends for Beijing. Barring an unexpected change of heart, these plans are unlikely while Rodrigo Duterte remains president of the Philippines through 2022.

Germany says Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a Novichok agent but the Kremlin denies any involvement.

While islands can claim the territorial sea and exclusive economic zone, rocks only receive territorial sea recognition, and low-tide elevations get neither by themselves.
They are redolent of love, unity, a somewhat saccharine self-satisfaction, and great, good spirits. As we head toward a contentious national election, an unlikely agency in the United States Postal Service has come into the crosshairs. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS has exhaustively documented the growth of these capabilities using commercial satellite imagery and other remote sensing tools. No matter how the ordnance was delivered, the math would be the same. This would help acclimate both sides to U.S. fighters operating from these bases and, if frequent enough, could strengthen deterrence by giving the United States some rapid-response capability in the South China Sea. "All the US can do is [have] Trump... reassert its concern about the reclamation activities.". First as a candidate and then in the early days of his tenure, President Barack Obama proposed big changes for the U.S. healthcare system. Last month, during a conference on China’s maritime ambitions, I was asked a question I often get about Beijing’s artificial island bases in the South China Sea. Taiwan possesses Itu Aba, sometimes called Taiping Island, the largest land feature in the Spratly Islands. Even for a regime that views deception as a de facto constitution, you'd think that the Chinese Communist Party would have a little more humility when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Creating artificial islands out of reefs and rocks, however, does not under international law bestow the territorial seas or exclusive economic zones that China seeks to claim. In the meantime, the United States can lay the groundwork for full implementation of the defense cooperation agreement by undertaking more ambitious infrastructure projects at agreed-upon sites and pushing the Armed Forces of the Philippines to support those upgrades. The main purpose of China’s artificial islands is not to help fight a war against the United States.

— would be operating at high risk given Chinese dominance of the sea and air space.

Doing so would require expending a lot of ordnance likely desperately needed in Northeast Asia, diverting important air and naval platforms and placing them at risk out of proportion to the potential battlefield gains. But these steps will not fundamentally alter the math.

Be prepared, the experts tell us. A hundred cruise missiles per outpost would not be an unreasonable estimate to effectively disable the bases. China has, meanwhile, deployed YJ-12B and YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missiles to its outposts in the Spratlys and Paracels, backed by longer-range missile capabilities from the mainland. Indeed, the historical evidence is far stronger for other regional countries. Yet the conventional wisdom throughout Washington still seems to be that they can be safely dismissed as lacking strategic value. China, however, has defied such criticism in the past and continued building islands and even placing military installations on them. FAIRVIEW, Pennsylvania — U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia believes direct engagement can be more instructive than words on a page. China has unveiled a new dredging ship capable of creating islands such as those Beijing has already built in the disputed South China Sea. Diplomacy, after all, only works when all parties are equally invested in it. That amounts to a lot of ordnance to drop, even if the goal were just to hit critical nodes like sensors, hangars, ammunition depots, and command and control facilities.

Planet Labs Inc/Handout via REUTERS MANILA, Philippines — Aside from maintaining presence in the South China Sea, Beijing continues to develop its artificial islands in the area, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Tuesday. A satellite photo taken on March 19 shows the Fiery Cross Reef, one of China's artificial island bases in the South China Sea. A 2016 arbitration panel agreed with the Philippines that Itu Aba is a rock and not an island, but its logic was far from conclusive, and its own disdain for precedent undercuts its claim to have its ruling considered to be final.

Recognition of Taiwan’s ownership of Itu Aba as ownership of an island, however, will not alone be enough. Creating artificial islands out of reefs and rocks, however, does not under international law bestow the territorial seas or exclusive economic zones that China seeks to claim. The critical infrastructure that would need to be hit to seriously degrade Chinese capabilities is spread out across a considerable area. Beijing’s primary strategy in the South China Sea is to use civilian and paramilitary pressure to coerce its Southeast Asian neighbors into abandoning their rights. What platforms would launch these hundreds of cruise missiles?