China Tests U.S. Resolve

A new challenge to freedom of the seas as the Trump era nears.
The Wall Street Journal

Crew members aboard the VOS Raasay recover U.S. and British Royal Navy ocean gliders taking part in the Unmanned Warrior exercise off the northwest coast of Scotland on Oct. 8. A similar unmanned underwater vehicle was seized by the Chinese navy in international waters off the coast of the Philippines on Dec. 15. 

China’s theft of a U.S. Navy underwater drone in full view of the USNS Bowditch on Thursday is a telling episode. 

While Beijing agreed to return the drone over the weekend, along with bluster that the U.S. had “hyped” the heist, the Chinese navy’s actions were a deliberate provocation. 

China is testing U.S. resolve to maintain freedom of navigation in international waters that Beijing illegally claims as its own.
Some think the theft is a response to Donald Trump’s decision to take a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s President. 

But the People’s Liberation Army has pulled these stunts before. 

In April 2001, a PLA pilot tried a dangerous intercept with a U.S. spy plane in international airspace. He misjudged the distance, losing his own life and causing the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing in China. 

Beijing released the crew and plane after a 10-day standoff.
In March 2009, the PLA began a harassment campaign against the USNS Impeccable in international waters. 

After several days of dangerous maneuvers by five Chinese ships and one plane, the Chinese maritime militia tried to steal a towed sonar array from the ship. 

Whether China today is responding to Mr. Trump or offering a final insult to Obama is beside the point because the drone theft is part of a larger Chinese pattern.
China’s behavior shows its intention to intimidate its neighbors and establish hegemony in East Asia. 

In recent weeks the PLA air force has flown practice bombing missions, with fighter escorts, near the Japanese island of Okinawa and around Taiwan. 

The Japanese air force scrambled to intercept Chinese planes 571 times last year, up from 96 in 2010. Recently China has deployed military forces on disputed shoals in the South China Sea, contradicting Xi Jinping’s promise to Mr. Obama.
China objects to U.S. Navy and Air Force transits through and near these bases. 

The Obama Administration promised to carry out such missions regularly but then restricted the Pentagon to a handful. 

That sent a message that the U.S. can be intimidated from exercising its rights.
The drone theft may be a Chinese warning that the U.S. Navy will face harassment if a Trump Administration steps up such patrols. 

China is also rapidly expanding its submarine fleet, as an asymmetric response to U.S. surface dominance, and undersea drones map the ocean floor and test currents and sonar for submarine passage and detection.
The Chinese interception occurred about 50 nautical miles from the U.S. base at Subic Bay in the Philippines. 

The recent anti-American rants by Rodrigo Duterte may also have encouraged China to hope that an episode at sea could drive a larger rift between Manila and Washington. 

The Navy will have to expect more such interference.
All of this is occurring as Mr. Trump is signalling his intention to take a tougher line with China, at least initially, as he renegotiates the bilateral economic and strategic relationship. 

Mr. Trump’s precise goals aren’t clear, but one promise he’s likely to fulfill is rebuilding the U.S. Navy to reinforce America’s Pacific presence.
Chinese leaders may think these shows of force will intimidate the Trump Administration the way they did Obama. 

But they are likely to have the opposite effect. 

Mr. Trump doesn’t separate economic from security issues, and the Chinese are playing with fire.

GOP senators call for 'firm response' to Chinese seizure of Navy drone

BY KRISTINA WONG

Republican senators are calling for a "firm response" to China's seizure of a Navy drone, including recalling the U.S. ambassador to China until the drone is returned.
"This brazenly hostile act is outrageous and must be met with a firm response. The U.S. Navy was operating in international waters conducting a standard exercise, and China should return the underwater vehicle immediately,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.).
Gardner is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, "The United States must not stand for such outrageous conduct.
“The Chinese Navy’s seizure of a U.S. unmanned oceanographic vessel in international waters is a flagrant violation of the freedom of the seas. China had no right to seize this vehicle," he added.
The incident occurred Thursday around noon local time in international waters off the coast of the Philippines, according to a defense official.
The USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was preparing to retrieve its unmanned drone out of the water as part of its typical mission to collect data on the ocean and weather patterns, the official said. 

The drone had surfaced and sent out a signal as to its location per normal operations.
A Chinese ship that had been shadowing the Bowditch then dropped its own small boat in the water and swooped in to grab the drone, the official said.
The Bowditch crew called over radio to the Chinese ship to ask for the equipment back. 

The Chinese crew confirmed receipt of the message, but began sailing away, leaving with the drone.
Around noon local time on Friday, the U.S. State Department filed an official demarche with China. The official said the matter is now in the State Department's hands.
Gardner urged the Obama administration to recall the U.S. ambassador to China until the drone is returned and a formal apology is issued.
"The United States must send a message to China, unilaterally and through the United Nations, that if its hostile behavior in the South China Sea continues, there will be repercussions," he said.
McCain added: "We are not witnessing a China committed to a ‘peaceful rise.’ Instead, we are confronting an assertive China that has demonstrated its willingness to use intimidation and coercion to disrupt the rules-based order that has been the foundation of security and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region for seven decades.
"As I have said repeatedly, we must adapt U.S. policy and strategy to reflect this reality and ensure we have the necessary military forces, capabilities, and posture in the region to deter, and if necessary, defeat aggression.”

Paper Tiger

America's “Innocent Passage” Did More Harm Than Good

By James Holmes

Unambitious. 

That’s the proper adjective for USS Decatur’s “freedom of navigation” cruise near the Paracel Islands last week. 

Released last year, the Pentagon’s Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy lists “safeguarding freedom of the seas” first among U.S. strategic priorities for the region, followed by “deterring conflict and coercion” and “promoting adherence to international law and standards.” 

The Maritime Security Strategy is a fine document on the whole, and there’s no quarreling with its to-do list. 

The document also presents observers a yardstick to judge Decatur’s exploits in the South China Sea.
The yardstick tells a sobering tale: on balance the operation advanced none of the Pentagon’s self-professed strategic aims. 

It challenged one minor Chinese infraction—Beijing’s demand that foreign ships request permission before transiting waters China regards as its own—while letting China’s major affronts to freedom of the seas stand. 

Indeed, by seeming to acquiesce in the notion that the transit was an “innocent passage” through Chinese-claimed waters, the operation may have actually vindicated Beijing’s lawlessness. 

That’s no way to promote adherence to international law and standards, let alone deter conflict or coercion.
Let’s review the legal dimension, then examine how misconceived operations ripple through U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific. 

Legalities first. 

The Aegis destroyer traversed waters that China deems part of its “territorial sea,” offshore waters subject to Chinese sovereignty. 

But a simple transit like Decatur’s does nothing to dispute Beijing’s assertion that it makes the rules regulating shipping in the South China Sea—including the Paracels. 

Indeed, the law of the sea explicitly permitsforeign vessels to pass through a coastal state’s territorial sea provided that’s all they do—pass through.
That’s why the doctrine is known as innocent passage. 

A vessel undertaking an innocent passage must refrain from all manner of routine military activities. It may not operate aircraft from its decks, conduct underwater surveys, or do anything else that might be construed as impeaching the coastal state’s security. 

Decatur evidently desisted from all of these activities—and thus comported itself as though it were executing an innocent passage through China’s rightful territorial waters.
What does acting as though China’s claims are legitimate prove? 

Not much. 

The voyage did nothing to dispute Beijing’s effort to fence off the Paracels within “baselines” sketched around the archipelago’s perimeter and proclaim sovereignty—physical control backed by force—over the waters within. 

To reply to that claim, Decatur should have made the transit while carrying out every activity Beijing purports to forbid—sending helicopters aloft, probing the depths with sonar, and on and on. 

What China proscribes, in other words, friends of freedom of the sea must do.
Fail to contest excesses and you consent to them by default.
Now, it is true that Decatur’s crew didn’t request Chinese permission before making the crossing. 

The destroyer’s matter-of-fact approach flouted China’s demand that foreign ships request permission before transiting its territorial sea. (For that matter, China insists that skippers ask permission before essaying “any military acts” in its offshore “exclusive economic zone,” the expanded sea belt where the coastal state has exclusive rights to harvest natural resources from the water and seafloor. Apart from the right to extract resources, the coastal state has no special say-so over what happens in the EEZ. The EEZ and the waters beyond comprise the “high seas,” a “commons” that belongs to everyone and no one.)
In effect, then, USS Decatur and the U.S. Navy were quibbling over a trivial rule China wants to enforce rather than denying that China has any right to make such rules.
One suspects Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, the destroyer’s namesake, would shake his head in bafflement. 

Decatur was among the most venturesome seafarers in U.S. naval annals, and not someone to blanch at jabbing coastal-state rulers who entertained grandiose pretensions. 

In 1804, Decatur brought the ketch USS Intrepid under the guns of Tripoli—and risked being blasted to splinters—to burn the captured sail frigate USS Philadelphia before the pasha put her to work raiding U.S. merchantmen. 

Afterward Lord Horatio Nelson—himself no slouch at nautical derring-do—reportedly acclaimed Decatur and Intrepid sailors for pulling off the “most bold and daring act of the age.”
High praise indeed! 

In fact, Decatur furnishes a north star to guide U.S. Navy exploits on behalf of maritime liberty.
Now consider alliance relations. 

The softly, softly approach underwriting Decatur’s cruise might mollify China, although you would never know it from the Chinese spokesmen huffing and puffing afterward about “illegal” and “provocative” U.S. actions. 

But circumspection in a good cause—the cause of freedom of the seas—does little to inspire fellow seafaring states to run risks of their own. 

Quite the reverse.
Consider what some of America’s closest allies have done in recent months. 

Last month the uniformed chief of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force distanced Tokyo from the South China Sea disputes, ruling out joint freedom-of-navigation patrols alongside the U.S. Navy. The Australian government has evidently gone wobbly as well. 

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has declared that the Royal Australian Navy doesn’t conduct freedom-of-navigation demonstrations within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-claimed islands—the outer limit of the territorial sea. 

Nor does Canberra do much to challenge Beijing’s pretensions elsewhere in the South China Sea.
And don’t get me started on Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, a statesman who could play a character from a Stephen King novel in his post-presidential career. 

The president takes to its utmost extreme the “realist” logic that weak powers should “bandwagon” with nearby “hegemons”—ingratiating themselves with domineering powers like China to protect themselves from those domineering powers and, with any luck, advance their parochial interests in the bargain. 

Around the same time Decatur was transiting near the Paracels, Duterte gave a fiery speech in Beijing announcing the Philippines’ “separation” from the U.S.-Philippine alliance while professing fealty to China.
Take Duterte as a symptom—not the cause—of the malaise afflicting U.S.-Philippine relations. 

One doubts he would make such a break with the Philippines’ longstanding patron were he confident in America’s staying power in Southeast Asia, and in the durability of its commitment to the archipelagic state’s defense. 

Emboldening prospective foes while disheartening allies and friends is doubtful strategy. 

And yet that’s what happens when a superpower declares ambitious strategic aims in a document like the Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy yet pursues these aims incoherently and halfheartedly.
In short, Washington has made itself look like an inconstant steward of the global commons. 

In the future the U.S. Navy must challenge what needs to be challenged—reassuring allies and friends that America remains strong and resolute. 

And as naval leaders draw up operations and strategy, they should ask themselves:
What would Decatur do?