U.S. kicks China out of military exercise

“As an initial response to China's continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific.” -- Lt. Col. Christopher Logan 

By WESLEY MORGAN 

RIMPAC, the world’s largest multinational maritime exercise is a biennial event which allows participating nations to work together to build trust and enhance partnerships needed to improve maritime security. 

The United States has revoked an invitation to China's People's Liberation Army Navy to participate in a naval exercise, the Pentagon announced Wednesday, citing Beijing's destabilizing moves in the South China Sea — including deploying weapons and other military equipment on contested islands and artificial reefs.
China announced in January that it had accepted a U.S. invitation to participate in the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise, the world's largest international maritime wargame.
The PLA Navy contributed five ships to the last one, in 2016, which included the militaries of 26 nations. 

China first participated in 2014, when it sent four ships along with an uninvited spy ship that skirted the exercise area.
“As an initial response to China's continued militarization of the South China Sea we have disinvited the PLA Navy from the 2018 Rim of the Pacific,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan of the Marine Corps said in a statement.
The United States, he added, has “strong evidence” China has deployed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles and electronic jamming systems on artificial islands in the Spratly Islands chain that Vietnam and Taiwan also claim as their territory. 

“China’s landing of bomber aircraft at Woody Island has also raised tensions."
The United States maintains that “these recent deployments and the continued militarization of these features is a violation of the promise that Xi Jinping made to the United States and the world not to militarize the Spratly Islands,” Logan said.
The action comes as the United States and China are engaged in high-level talks aimed at averting a tit-for-tat trade war. 

Last week, negotiators reached a preliminary deal for China to buy more U.S. goods and to address other concerns. 

But U.S. officials have warned they could revive their threat to impose tariffs on $50 billion to $150 billion worth of Chinese goods if a final deal is not reached.
There was no immediate response from the Chinese government about the decision to revoke its invitation to the naval exercise.
China had already based missiles on Woody Island and other military equipment on artificial islands it has built in the area before the revelation earlier this month that it had positioned anti-ship cruise missiles on three reefs in the Spratlys, a move first reported by CNBC. 

Those are seen as threats to U.S. aircraft carriers that operate in the region.
The United States has conducted two so-called freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea this year. 

The most recent was in March, when a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near an artificial reef in the Spratlys that China seized from the Philippines more than 20 years ago.
The Chinese military condemned that operation as an “illegal provocation.”
Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, the new top U.S. officer in the Pacific, Adm. Philip Davidson, said that "China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States” and would be able to use its bases in the Spratlys “to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south.”
Also last month, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping presided over a large-scale review of Chinese naval forces in the South China Sea.

China Deploys Military Plane to Third South China Sea Airstrip

• Landing follows deplopment of missile systems in Spratlys
• Vietnam, Australia protest militarization of structures

By David Tweed

Subi Reef in the South China Sea. 

China has landed a military plane on the last of its three airstrips in the disputed South China Sea, a Washington-based research institution said, amid renewed complaints about the country expanding its military presence in the busy shipping lane.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said satellite images from April 28 showed the first confirmed deployment of a military aircraft -- a Shaanxi Y-8 transport plane -- on Subi Reef. 

The structure hosts one of three runways China has built as part of a massive dredging and reclamation operation in the Spratlys chain since 2013, and was the last of three where military aircraft had been observed.
“This should be particularly concerning to the Philippines,” AMTI, a unit of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on its website. 

About 100 Philippine civilians and a small military garrison are stationed on the Thitu islet, about 12 nautical miles away from Subi.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a faxed request for comment.
China claims more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, a $5 trillion-a-year shipping route where five other countries including the Philippines and Vietnam also have claims. 

Regional concerns about China’s presence in the area reemerged earlier this month after the foreign ministry confirmed reports that the People’s Liberation Army had installed missile systems on Subi, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross, where it has military-grade airstrips.

U.S. Warning
Chinese military aircraft have previously landed on other Chinese structures in the Spratlys, AMTI said. 

The first was a naval patrol aircraft -- possibly a Y-8 -- that landed on Fiery Cross in April 2016 to evacuate three people who had fallen ill. 

The Philippine Daily Inquirer last month published an aerial photo dated Jan. 6 showing two Xian Y-7 military transport aircraft on Mischief Reef.
China has installed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missile systems on Subi Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross, CNBC reported earlier this month. 

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying defended the move, saying the deployment was necessary to protect China’s sovereignty.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders warned that there would be “near-term and long-term consequences” of China’s militarization of the waters. 

Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said any military build-up would run counter to China’s commitments, in an apparent reference to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s pledge not to militarize the structures.
Vietnam asked China to remove the military equipment deployed on its features in the Spratly Islands, Vietnam News reported Wednesday, citing Le Thi Thu Hang, spokeswoman for its foreign ministry. 

Hang said the placement of the missiles violated Vietnam’s sovereignty.
“If not already clear, China’s installation of anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and electronic jamming equipment in the Spratly Islands is indication that it has every intent of enforcing its maritime claims,” said Felix Chang, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
Last month, Xi showed off his growing South China Sea military might, presiding over a the country’s largest-ever fleet review. 

Xi observed 48 vessels, 76 aircraft and more than 10,000 service personnel at the naval hub of Sanya.

The Week Donald Trump Lost the South China Sea

Vietnam's capitulation shows China's neighbors fear the U.S. no longer has their backs.
BY BILL HAYTON

Vietnam’s history is full of heroic tales of resistance to China.

But this month Hanoi bent the knee to Beijing, humiliated in a contest over who controls the South China Sea, the most disputed waterway in the world. 

Hanoi has been looking to Washington for implicit backing to see off Beijing’s threats. 

At the same time, the Trump administration demonstrated that it does not understand and sufficiently care about the interests of its friends and potential partners in Southeast Asia to protect them against China. 

Southeast Asian governments will conclude that the United States does not have their backs. 

And while Washington eats itself over Russian spies and health care debates, one of the world’s most crucial regions is slipping into Beijing’s hands.
There’s no tenser set of waters in the world than the South China Sea. 

For the last few years, China and its neighbors have been bluffing, threatening, cajoling, and suing for control of its resources. 

In June, Vietnam made an assertive move. 

After two and a half years of delay, it finally granted Talisman Vietnam (a subsidiary of the Spanish energy firm Repsol) permission to drill for gas at the very edge of Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea.
Under mainstream interpretations of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Vietnam was well within its rights to do so. 

Under China’s idiosyncratic interpretation, it was not. 

China has never even put forward a clear claim to that piece of seabed. 

On July 25, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang would only urge “the relevant party to cease the relevant unilateral infringing activities” — but without saying what they actually were. 

In the absence of official clarity, Chinese lawyers and official think tanks have suggested two main interpretations.
China may be claiming “historic rights” to this part of the sea on the grounds that it has always been part of the Chinese domain (something obviously contested by all the other South China Sea claimants, as well as neutral historians). 

Alternatively, it may be claiming that the Spratly Islands — the collection of islets, reefs, and rocks off the coasts of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines — are entitled as a group to their own EEZ. 

An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague, however, ruled these claims incompatible with UNCLOS a year ago. 

China has refused to recognize both the tribunal and its ruling.
In mid-June, Talisman Vietnam set out to drill a deepwater “appraisal well” in Block 136-03 on what insiders believe is a billion-dollar gas field, only 50 miles from an existing Repsol operation. 

The Vietnamese government knew there was a risk that China might try to interfere and sent out coast guard ships and other apparently civilian vessels to protect the drillship.
At first, China’s intervention was relatively diplomatic. 

The vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Gen. Fan Changlong, visited Hanoi on June 18 and demanded an end to the drilling. 

When Vietnam refused, he cancelled a joint meeting on border security (the 4th Border Defense Friendly Exchange) and went home.
Reports from Hanoi (which have been confirmed by similar reports, from different sources, to the Australia-based analyst Carlyle Thayer) say that, shortly afterward, the Vietnamese ambassador in Beijing was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and told, bluntly, that unless the drilling stopped and Vietnam promised never to drill in that part of the sea ever again, China would take military action against Vietnamese bases in the South China Sea.
This is a dramatic threat, but it is not unprecedented. 

While researching my book on the South China Sea, I was told by a former BP executive that China had made similar threats to that company when it was operating off the coast of Vietnam in early 2007. 

Fu Ying, then the Chinese ambassador in London, told BP’s CEO at the time, Tony Hayward, that she could not guarantee the safety of BP employees if the company did not abandon its operations in the South China Sea. 

BP immediately agreed and over the following months withdrew from its offshore Vietnam operations. 

I asked Fu about this at a dinner in Beijing in 2014, and she replied, “I did what I did because I have great respect for BP and did not want it to get into trouble.”
Vietnam occupies around 28 outposts in the Spratly Islands. 

Some are established on natural islands, but many are isolated blockhouses on remote reefs. According to Thayer, 15 are simply platforms on legs: more like place markers than military installations. 

They would be all but impossible to defend from a serious attack. 

China demonstrated this with attacks on Vietnamese positions in the Paracel Islands in 1974 and in a battle over Johnson South Reef in the Spratlys in 1988. 

Both incidents ended with casualties for Vietnam and territorial gains for China. 

There are rumors, entirely unconfirmed, that there was a shooting incident near one of these platforms in June. 

If true, this may have been a more serious warning from Beijing to Hanoi.
Meanwhile, the drillship Deepsea Metro I had found exactly what Repsol was looking for: a handsome discovery — mainly gas but with some oil. 

The company thought there could be more and kept on drilling. 

It hoped to reach the designated total depth of the well by the end of July.
Back in Hanoi, the Politburo met to discuss what to do. 

Low oil prices and declining production from the country’s existing offshore fields were hurting the government budget. 

The country needed cheap energy to fuel its economic growth and keep the Communist Party in power — but, at the same time, it was deeply dependent on trade with China.
It is all but impossible to know for sure how big decisions are made in Vietnam, but the version apparently told to Repsol was that the Politburo was deeply split. 

Of its 19 members, 17 favored calling China’s bluff. 

Only two disagreed, but they were the most influential figures at the table: the general secretary of the party, Nguyen Phu Trong, and Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich.
After two acrimonious meetings in mid-July, the decision was made: Vietnam would kowtow to Beijing and end the drilling. 

According to the same sources, the winning argument was that the Trump administration could not be relied upon to come to Hanoi’s assistance in the event of a confrontation with China. 

Reportedly, the mood was rueful. 

If Hillary Clinton had been sitting in the White House, Repsol executives were apparently told, she would have understood the stakes and everything would have been different.
The faith in Clinton isn’t surprising. 

Her interventions on behalf of the Southeast Asian claimant states, starting in Hanoi at the July 2010 meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum, are well remembered in the region. 

The Barack Obama administration’s focus on the regional rules-based order was welcomed by governments fearful of domination by either the United States or China.
That said, some U.S. observers are skeptical that any other administration would have been more forthcoming. 

Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, questions this apparent contrast: “What would the U.S. have done differently [under Obama]? I find it unlikely that the U.S. would militarily defend Vietnam against China. Vietnam isn’t an ally.”
Yet it wouldn’t have taken much: a statement or two about the rules-based order and the importance of abiding by UNCLOS, some coincidental naval exercises during the weeks of the drilling, perhaps even some gunnery practice in the region of Block 136-03 and a few quiet words between Washington and Beijing. 

“Forward-deployed diplomacy,” as it used to be called. 

The Obama administration warned Beijing off the Scarborough Shoal in April 2016 this way. 

Has Donald Trump’s Washington forgotten the dark art of deterrence?
The implications of China’s victory are obvious. 

Regardless of international law, China is going to set the rules in the South China Sea. 

It is going to apply its own version of history, its own version of “shared” ownership, and it will dictate who can exploit which resources. 

If Vietnam, which has at least the beginnings of a credible naval deterrent, can be intimidated, then so can every other country in the region, not least the Philippines.
This month, Manila announced its intention to drill for the potentially huge gas field that lies under the Reed Bank in the South China Sea. 

The desire to exploit those reserves (before the country’s main gas field at Malampaya runs out in a few years’ time) was the main reason for the Philippines to initiate the arbitration proceedings in The Hague. 

The Philippines won a near total legal victory in that case, but since taking office just over a year ago, Rodrigo Duterte has downplayed its importance. 

He appears to have been intimidated: preferring to appeal to China for financial aid rather than assert his country’s maritime claims.
In May, Duterte told an audience in Manila that Xi Jinping had warned him there would be war if the Philippines tried to exploit the gas reserves that the Hague tribunal had ruled belonged to his country. Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in the Philippine capital to discuss “joint development” of those energy resources.
Where Duterte and the Vietnamese leadership go, others will follow. 

Southeast Asian governments have reached one major conclusion from President Trump’s first six months: The United States is not prepared to put skin in the game. 

What is the point of all those freedom of navigation operations to maintain UNCLOS if, when push comes to shove, Washington does not support the countries that are on the receiving end of Chinese pressure?
Why has Washington been so inept? 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson knows the stakes well. 

His former company ExxonMobil is also investigating a massive gas prospect in disputed waters. 

The “Blue Whale” field lies in Block 118, farther north and closer to Vietnam’s coast than Repsol’s discovery — but also contested by China. 

Like so much else, it’s a mystery whether this is a deliberate choice by the Trump White House not to get involved in the details of the disputes or if it is a reflection of the decimation of the State Department’s capabilities, with so many senior posts vacant and so many middle-ranking staff leaving.
The most worrying possibility would be that Tillerson failed to act out of the desire to see his former commercial rival, Repsol, fail so that his former employer, ExxonMobil, could obtain greater leverage in the Vietnamese energy market. 

But what government would ever trust Tillerson again?
Repsol is currently plugging its highly successful appraisal well with cement and preparing to sail away from a total investment of more than $300 million. 

Reports from the region say a Chinese seismic survey vessel, the HYSY760, protected by a small flotilla, is on its way to the same area to examine the prospects for itself. 

UNCLOS has been upended, and the rules-based order has been diminished. 

This wasn’t inevitable nor a fait accompli. 

If Hanoi thought Washington had its back, China could have been deterred — and the credibility of the United States in the region strengthened. 

Instead, Trump has left the region drifting in the direction of Beijing.

Sina Delenda Est

More Chinese missiles bound for disputed islands
By Lucas Tomlinson 

China has sent more surface-to-air missiles from the mainland to the South China Sea, and the U.S. intelligence community anticipates these new missiles will eventually go to some of China’s disputed territories for the first time, two U.S. officials tell Fox News.
The new missiles have been seen by American intelligence satellites on China’s provincial island province of Hainan. 

While Hainan is not part the disputed islands, officials say this location is “only temporary” and anticipate the missiles will be deployed soon to the contested Spratley Islands or Woody Island.
The two missile systems seen on Hainan island are known as the CSA-6b and HQ-9. 

The CSA-6b is a combined close-in missile system with a range of 10 miles and also contains anti-aircraft guns. 

The longer-range HQ-9 system has a range of 125 miles, and is roughly based on the Russian S-300 system.
This latest deployment of Chinese military equipment comes days after the Chinese returned an unclassified underwater research drone in the South China Sea. 

The Pentagon accused a Chinese Navy ship of stealing the drone, over the objections of the American crew operating it in international waters to collect oceanographic data.
The escalation comes weeks after President Donald Trump received a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president breaking decades-long “one-China” protocol and angering Beijing.
China has deployed surface-to-air missiles to Woody Island in the South China Sea before, as Fox News first reported in February.
It has yet to deploy missiles to its seven man-made islands in the Spratly chain of islands. 

Weeks ago civilian satellite imagery obtained by a Washington, D.C., based think-tank showed gun emplacement on all the disputed islands, but not missiles.
Earlier this month, Fox News first reported China getting ready to deploy another missile defense system from a port in southeast China. 

China also flew a long-range bomber around the South China Sea for the first time since March 2015 and days after Mr. Trump’s phone call with his Taiwan counterpart.
Days before President Trump’s call, a pair of long-range H-6K bombers flew around the island of Taiwan for the first time.
Beijing has long expressed interest in fortifying its seven man-made islands in the South China Sea.
Last year, Xi Jinping pledged not to “militarize” the islands, in the Rose Garden at the White House.
“This another example of the adventurous and aggressiveness of the Chinese in the face of an anemic and feckless set of policies that we've seen over the last eigh years,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former head of Air Force intelligence, in an interview with Fox News.
This month, U.S. intelligence satellites also spotted components for the Chinese version of the SA-21 surface-to-air missile system at the port of Jieyang, in southeast China, where officials say China has made similar military shipments in the past to its islands in the South China Sea.
The Chinese SA-21 system, based on the more advanced Russian S-400, is a more capable missile system than the HQ-9.