Page 5 - Rethinking China Policy

Rethinking China Policy

Trump is not coming to power in such a period of history.

And although to date his discourse about defense seems to revolve around cost, he will quickly find that
capability and skill will matter more and are in short supply.

After a long period of fighting land wars against locals and jihadists expeditionaries, neither the U.S.
military nor diplomatic elite are well prepared for the decade ahead.

This is one in which armed conflict with peer competitors has already started and skill in maneuver warfare
and diplomacy will be learned or not.

Contemporary history is learned on the fly; it is not about inherited skills; it is about shaping skills
appropriate to one’s age and with an old one ending a new one opening we shall see if we are up to the
challenge.

TOWARDS BREAKOUT IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: THE PRC SHAPES A WAY
AHEAD

By Danny Lam

The seizure of a USN Drone operating 50nm northwest of Subic Bay operating in International waters of
South China Sea (SCS) highlights the evolution of PRC policy and reflects a way ahead. The drones and its
tender USNS Bowditch were well away from any PRC claims and beyond the 9 dash line. This act could be
viewed as piracy on the high seas by the PRC regime’s navy or alternatively, as the logical extension of PRC
policy toward the SCS.

Appeasers have called for this incident, like the armed island building activities, to be overlooked and called
for broad concessions to the PRC in order to secure freedom of navigation in the area.
The question with this approach concerns the PRC’s intent and long-term plans, and whether concessions
will do any more than what was achieved under the Obama and GW Bush Administrations.

Viewed in historical context dating back at least back to the 2001 Hainan Island incident, where a USN EP-3
and an intercepting Chinese J-8 fighter collided, it is a gradual, steady, and longstanding policy of expansion
of PRC military and para-military presence in the SCS that has been operative at least since the late 1990s.

From this perspective, the only unique factor is the location of the intercept which is outside of any PRC SCS
claims, but within the Philippine EEZ. Otherwise, the behavior is consistent with the PRC regime’s past claim that
the operation of an unarmed drone collecting hydrographic data from the PRC perspective does not constitute
“innocent passage” — the basis upon which USNS Impeccable was harassed in 2001 while operating about
75nm south of Hainan Island.

What is so different about this incident?

Explanations of PRC behavior range from issues like fisheries, mineral rights, nationalism, to protection of the
sizable military presence at Hainan Island.
Benign explanations by appeasers suggest that PRC is seeking “face” rather than having ambitions to
dominate the area irrespective of the regime’s accession and ratification of UNCLOS.

In theory, all but the military-strategic issues can be resolved within the existing frameworks for sharing of
resources and settlement of disputes in regimes like UNCLOS. Military-strategic issues, on the other hand,

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