How to Get Ready for Confronting China With Naval Air, Surface, Unmanned Gear, Marines, and - Stratospheric Balloons

If you missed Midrats Episode 632, you missed an interesting discussion of how to gear up by the 2030's using current tech while awaiting those long term projects that may arrive in the 2040's.

Our guest was Bryan Clark, who with his co-author, Tim Walton wrote Regaining the High Ground Against China: A Plan to Achieve US Naval Aviation Superiority This Decade, which I encourage everyone to read. These gentlemen propose an approach to getting ready for confrontations in the waters, countries, and islands of the area involving the Philippine Sea, South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the various chokepoints in that region. It's a pretty extensive document that we just barely scratched the surface of in the hour we had to discuss it.

However, if you are wondering how to keep the Chinese from assuming that the U.S. Navy will "do what it has always done" then the piece's suggestion of building forces for "flexible" operations that allow commanders to play "mix and match" instead of being forced to do what the Chinese are preparing for - well, there are lots of good thoughts in the argument presented by Clark and Walton.

I suggest reading the piece first, then listening to the discussion. Otherwise you might miss excellent images like this:

Listen to "Episode 632: The High Ground in the Western Pacific, with Bryan Clark" on Spreaker.

On Midrats 14 March 2021 - Episode 584: Facing Today's China, with Dean Cheng

Please join us at 5pm (EDT!) on 14 March for Midrats Episode 584: Facing Today's China, with Dean Cheng

While the rest of the world paused to focus on COVID-19 the last year, even though the pandemic started there, the People's Republic of China did not stop her long, steady push out to the world to take the place she feels she in entitled to.

From the border of India to South America and back to the Western Pacific, China feels the wind at her back.

Where is China signaling she will be be the greatest challenge to her neighbors and the global community?

Returning to Midrats this Sunday for the full hour will be our guest Dean Cheng.

Dean is the Senior Research Fellow for Chinese political and security affairs at the Asia Studies Center of The Heritage Foundation. He specializes in Chinese military and foreign policy, and has written extensively on Chinese military doctrine, technological implications of its space program, and “dual use” issues associated with China’s industrial and scientific infrastructure. He is the author of “Cyber Dragon: Inside China's Information Warfare and Cyber Operations.”

Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he was a senior analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research and development center, and a senior analyst with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC, now Leidos), the Fortune 500 specialist in defense and homeland security. He has testified before Congress, spoken at the (American) National Defense University, US Air Force Academy, and the National Space Symposium, and been published in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

If you use Apple Podcasts, and miss the show live, you can pick up this episode and others and add Midrats to your podcast list simply by going to here. Or on Spreaker. Or on Spotify.

China's "Gray Zone" War: Sand Suckers

Interesting piece from Reuters:

China’s latest weapon against Taiwan: the sand dredger:

The sand-dredging is one weapon China is using against Taiwan in a campaign of so-called gray-zone warfare, which entails using irregular tactics to exhaust a foe without actually resorting to open combat. Since June last year, Chinese dredgers have been swarming around the Matsu Islands, dropping anchor and scooping up vast amounts of sand from the ocean bed for construction projects in China.

China As Bully: New Maritime "Law" Threatens War With Neighbors (and the U.S.)

China's new maritime "law" is another example of China attempts to cow its neighbors into submission to its rules that counter the existing international rule. And the neigbors are aware of this, as set up in the The Japan Times report Japan braces for moves in East China Sea after China Coast Guard law:

Japan is has expressed alarm over China’s new law that allows the China Coast Guard to use force against foreign parties for what Beijing views as violations of its sovereignty and jurisdiction.

The new law, which entered into force Monday, “could shake the order based on international law,” a Defense Ministry executive warns.

Tokyo is braced for possible Chinese military actions in the East China Sea, where tensions are running high over the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, claimed by Beijing.

Some in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party say that the Self-Defense Forces should play a bigger role in dealing with the situation.

U.S. Defense Department report last year described the China Goast Guard, often called the country’s second navy, as “by far the largest coast guard force in the world.”

Beijing put the coast guard under the command of the Communist Party of China’s Central Military Commission, the top leadership body for the country’s military, in 2018.

The new law allows the coast guard to take all necessary measures, including the use of weapons, against foreign organizations or individuals that violate Chinese sovereignty or jurisdiction.

By contrast, the Japan Coast Guard is bound by strict restrictions on the use of weapons under the law, which clearly bans it from military activities.

Coast guard ships from China have repeatedly intruded into Japanese waters around the Senkaku Islands.

Last year, Japan spotted Chinese coast guard and other government vessels inside the contiguous zone surrounding the territorial waters around the islets on 333 seperate days, a record number.

Usually, Japan Coast Guard patrol vessels deal with such ships from China. But if Chinese ships become aggressive, SDF vessels may be dispatched to conduct security operations.

At an LDP meeting last week, lawmakers attacked the new Chinese law. One warned, “China is taking aim at the Senkaku Islands,” while another said, “China’s move is nothing less than a threat.”

Yes, this is how wars get started - overreaching by a neighborhood bully who feels slighted by what happened in the past. China's "100 years of humiliation" ended some time ago, but apparently it allows the CCP dictatorship all the excuse it needs to attle sabers.

Couple this with the latest aggresson in the air in Taiwan airspace, China is feeling out the new U.S. leadership. I hope they find that it has a spine.

UPDATE: And in the Philippines:

The Philippines has protested a new Chinese law that authorizes its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels and destroy other countries’ structures on islands it claims, Manila’s top diplomat said Wednesday.

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said in a tweet that the new Chinese law “is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies” it. Failure to challenge the law “is submission to it,” he said.

“While enacting law is a sovereign prerogative, this one — given the area involved, or for that matter the open South China Sea — is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies the law,” Locsin said.

Fun with China: Sanctions Against the China National Offshore Oil Corporation

Sometimes, strategy includes economic "warfare," as China well knows from its actions againts those countries that dare to criticize it - like Australia. However, China itself is subject to such strategies, which the Trump administration has been using with some effect. What follows is a look at one such move.

World Oil Report links a Bloomberg report U.S. sanctions China’s CNOOC on drilling in disputed South China Sea:

China’s third-biggest oil company faces a U.S. blacklist, which could spur major outflows from its Hong Kong-listed unit, after years of involvement in offshore drilling in disputed South China Sea waters.

China National Offshore Oil Corp., the nation’s main deepwater explorer, is among four companies to be added to a list of firms owned or controlled by the Chinese military, Reuters reported. The move comes as the Trump administration plans several new hard-line moves against Beijing in the final weeks of its term.

***

CNOOC is the smallest of China’s so-called big three state-owned oil majors after China National Petroleum Corp. and China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec. CNOOC’s operations in the South China Sea have run into controversy because China claims drilling rights in waters far from its borders, and within 200 miles of countries like Vietnam and the Philippines.

***

U.S. investors held 16.5% of the shares in CNOOC’s Hong Kong-listed unit as of Friday, creating potential for major outflows if they’re forced to divest, according to Henik Fung, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. President Donald Trump signed an order this month barring American investments in Chinese firms owned or controlled by the military. The unit, Cnooc Ltd., fell 14% on Monday.

CNOOC also owns U.S. oil and gas fields, partners with companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. on international projects, and uses American technology and equipment. Any disruption along those lines would have a “huge impact” on the company, said Sengyick Tee, an analyst at SIA Energy in Beijing.

***

CNOOC has been at the center of territorial disputes in the South China Sea since 2012, when it invited foreign drillers to explore blocks off Vietnam that Hanoi’s leaders had already awarded to companies including Exxon Mobil and OAO Gazprom. In 2014, the countries traded accusations that each other’s boats had rammed vessels, including around a CNOOC oil rig near the Paracel Islands.

About those disputes, a report from 2014 by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) CNOOC's Offshore Energy Aspirations in the South China Sea:

However, since 2012, CNOOC’s attempts to move production further into the South China Sea have been at the center of territorial-related tensions between China and Vietnam. In 2012, CNOOC offered a series of nine oil exploration blocks to outside investors, which conflict with Vietnam’s territorial claims in the South China Sea (shown in orange below).

 

Now, with the possibility of a different administration in Washington, you can guess that the Chinese will not be idly sitting by to see whether this strategy of punishing China for its abuses of international law and its internal humanitarian abuses will continue. You can bet they'll be lobbbying hard to have these sorts of sanctions eliminated.

Recurring Item: "China Threatens"

Shannon Tiezzi reports at The Diplomat Xi Warns That China Will ‘Use War to Prevent War’: China's 

Chairman "President" Xi rattles the Korean War as a victory for China and suggests it as a lesson for the U.S.

Xi’s speech echoed – but greatly expanded on – the themes of his remarks on October 19. First, he emphasized the Korean War as a David-vs-Goliath struggle, with China standing up for justice against a far more powerful enemy. In his words, the war started when the U.S., acting from its “Cold War mentality,” “interfered” in the resolution of the Korean civil war (translation: North Korea invaded the South, and the United States intervened).

In this “extremely asymmetric” war, Xi said, China won with “less steel, more spirit” against an enemy equipped with “more steel, less spirit”: “The forces of China and North Korea defeated their armed-to-teeth rival and shattered the myth of invincibility of the U.S. army.”

***

But Xi also tries hard to paint this as a victory not only for China, but the world. According to his speech, the end of the Korean War was a triumph for “peace and justice” and a blow to “imperialism.” He claimed that the war “greatly encouraged” the trend toward Asian countries’ independence and liberation from colonial forces.

***

But Xi also warns that “the road ahead will not be smooth,” and advises China that it will need the martial spirit of the war to overcome today’s challenges. “It is necessary to speak to invaders in the language they know: that is, use war to prevent war… and use a [military] victory to win peace and respect,” Xi said.

In the last 70 years, one side's ally on the Korean peninsula has prospered and its people are free from repression and it's not the one on whose behalf China intervened.

Just sayin'

NASA image from 2014

I wouldn't be too proud of a war "victory" that leaves my ally looking like that at night, Mr. Xi.

China Games: "Pakistan politicians fear losing strategic islands to China"

From Nikkei Asia, a report of how China seems to be seeking strategic ports in Pakistan and near India and the vital oil lanes from the Strait of Hormuz: Pakistan politicians fear losing strategic islands to China

Pakistan's federal government has triggered a political uproar after taking direct control of two islands previously under the regional government of Sindh province.

President Arif Alvi signed the Pakistan Islands Development Authority (PIDA) ordinance last month to facilitate reclamation and urban planning on Bundal and Bhuddo islands, which are located south of Karachi. Both islands are some eight kilometers across, and the largest along Sindh's coast.

Government officials say PIDA has been created to develop the islands as commercial zones. Imran Ismail, Sindh's governor, has claimed that Bundal on its own can take on Dubai and attract investment of $50 billion -- equal to the amount already tagged for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key component in President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

****

The ordinance is helpful to Beijing's expanding economic ambitions in Pakistan. Last month, it nominated Nong Rang as its ambassador to Islamabad. Unusually, he is a political appointee well versed in commerce and trade, and analysts believe this portends increased commercial and BRI activities.

Mohan Malik, a visiting fellow at Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, said the sudden way in which the two islands near Karachi have been placed under federal control shows that something is afoot. He told Nikkei that the ordinance's stated goals of developing the islands for trade, investment and international tourism "seem to have been taken straight out of Beijing's BRI playbook."

 

Interesting,

2019 China Military Power Report from the Defense Intelligence Agency

Link to PDF of the report here.

From the Preface:

The Defense Intelligence Agency—indeed the broader U.S. Intelligence Community—is continually asked, "What do we need to know about China?" What is China’s vision of the world and its role in it? What are Beijing’s strategic intentions and what are the implications for Washington? How are the PLA’s roles and missions changing as it becomes a more capable military force?

Since Mao Zedong’s Communist Revolution in October 1949 brought the Chinese Communist Party to power, China has struggled to identify and align itself with its desired place in the world. Early factional struggles for control of party leadership, decades of negotiations to define territorial boundaries, and continued claims to territories not yet recovered have at times seemed at odds with the self-described nature of the Chinese as peace-loving and oriented only toward their own defense. Chinese leaders historically have been willing to use military force against threats to their regime, whether foreign or domestic, at times preemptively. Lack of significant involvement in military operations during the last several decades has led to a sense of insecurity within the PLA as it seeks to modernize into a great power military.

Still, the United States has at times found itself in direct conflict with China or Chinese forces. China supported two major conflicts in Asia after the Second World War, introducing Chinese volunteer forces in Korea and providing direct Chinese air and air defense support to Hanoi in Vietnam. In addition, China fought border skirmishes with the Soviet Union, India, and a unified Vietnam. In all three cases, military action was an integral part of Chinese diplomatic negotiations. Since then, China has concluded negotiations for most of its land borders (India and Bhutan being the outliers) but remains in contention with Japan, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam over maritime borders, which may in part explain motivation for the PLA Navy’s impressive growth and the new emphasis on maritime law enforcement capabilities.

China’s double-digit economic growth has slowed recently, but it served to fund several successive defense modernization Five-Year Plans. As international concern over Beijing's human rights policies stymied the PLA’s search for ever more sophisticated technologies, China shifted funds and efforts to acquiring technology by any means available. Domestic laws forced foreign partners of Chinese-based joint ventures to release their technology in exchange for entry into China’s lucrative market, and China has used other means to secure needed technology and expertise. The result of this multifaceted approach to technology acquisition is a PLA on the verge of fielding some of the most modern weapon systems in the world. In some areas, it already leads the world.

Chinese leaders characterize China’s long-term military modernization program as essential to achieving great power status. Indeed, China is building a robust, lethal force with capabilities spanning the air, maritime, space and information domains which will enable China to impose its will in the region. As it continues to grow in strength and confidence, our nation’s leaders will face a China insistent on having a greater voice in global interactions, which at times may be antithetical to U.S. interests. With a deeper understanding of the military might behind Chinese economic and diplomatic efforts, we can provide our own national political, economic, and military leaders the widest range of options for choosing when to counter, when to encourage, and when to join with China in actions around the world.

This report offers insights into the modernization of Chinese military power as it reforms from a defensive, inflexible ground-based force charged with domestic and peripheral security responsibilities to a joint, highly agile, expeditionary, and power-projecting arm of Chinese foreign policy that engages in military diplomacy and operations across the globe.

China Seeks Range Extender for Anti-Ship Missile

Reported as China accidentally reveals top secret new weapon

H-6K variant with cruise missiles (credit Alert 5)

A centrefold graphic recently flourished intimate details of a Chinese bomber carrying a stark new weapon. State-controlled media has since gone into cover-up mode. But military analysts think Beijing may have been caught with its pants down. The government produced Modern Ships magazine has splashed high-resolution computer-generated images of China’s most recent addition to its strategic bomber line-up – the H-6N – over the front and feature pages. But that’s not what drew the eye of the world’s defence thinkers. The graphics showed the new bomber carrying a huge ballistic missile slung under its fuselage. And that missile looks a lot like one of a family of ballistic weapons deployed by China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) as aircraft carrier killers.

I have my doubts that this was "accidental" - thinking it's more of a psyop, but it does raise some ideas to counter such weapons - ideas that our parents and grandparents (oh, hell, maybe even our great grandparents) thought up way back when in the fun days of the Cold War.

As seen in the photo above, the Chinese already have the potential to extend their cruise missile range by use of the same H-6 platform. So what does the potential to add the "ship killer" ballistic missile mean? As the article quoted above notes, it has the potential to add more range to this "carrier killer" anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM).

So, what do you do to counter a relatively slow moving bomber that flies out to launch a big ASBM? You do what we used to do against the kamikaze planes of the Japanese in WWII and the Soviet threat in the Cold War - you station "pickets" of various kinds to detect and report activity that might threaten your forces. In WWII, it was "radar picket destroyers." During the Cold War we had radar picket submarines
:

By this time, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was in full swing, and air defense of U.S. carrier battle groups on potential strike missions near the Russian landmass generated a requirement for even more submarine radar pickets. Eventually, six more World War II submarines - all Manitowac-built USS Gato (SS-212)-class boats - were chosen for the more drastic MIGRAINE III SSR conversion. Because experience had shown that even the newer SSR configurations were seriously cramped, the final MIGRAINE design

called for cutting the boats in two and inserting a 24-foot "plug" to get additional room for an expanded CIC and electronic spaces forward of the main control room. Even so, the MIGRAINE IIIs also had to sacrifice their after torpedo tubes for more berthing space, but they were fitted with a larger, streamlined sail, with the BPS-2 search radar mounted aft of the periscopes and other masts. An AN/BPS-3 height-finder radar on a pedestal just behind the sail and an AN/URN-3 TACAN beacon on the afterdeck completed the installation. The six MIGRAINE III boats - USSs Pompon (SSR-267), Rasher (SSR-269), Raton (SSR-270), Ray (SSR-271), Redfin (SSR-272), and Rock (SSR-274) - were all converted at the Philadelphia Navy Yard between 1951 and 1953 - giving the Navy a total of ten radar picket submarines to face the growing Soviet threat just as the Korean War was drawing to a close.

There were also radar picket ships of the Guardian class:

The AGRs were based on both coasts at Newport, Rhode Island (later Davisville, Rhode Island) and Treasure Island, California near San Francisco, eight on the East Coast and eight on the West Coast. They would spend 30–45 days at sea regardless of weather, alternating with 15 days in port, monitoring aircraft approaching the United States as an extension of the Distant Early Warning line under the Continental Air Defense Command. Their primary duty was to warn of a surprise Soviet bomber attack. The AGRs were augmented by twelve radar picket destroyer escorts of the Edsall and John C. Butler classes, known as DERs, and Lockheed WV-2 Warning Star aircraft. The DERs and WV-2s were called Barrier Forces, BarLant and BarPac, and operated much further from the US than the AGRs. By 1965, the development of over-the-horizon radar had superseded their function, and the radar picket ships were decommissioned and scrapped by the early 1970s.

SBX-1

Now we already have "over the horizon radar", including the "big ball on a oil platform" - SBX-1 (pdf) and a bunch of other stuff to look for missiles, which is exactly what the H-6N is - with a slow launch phase (under 600 knots) followed by a more rapid phase after the booster on the missile engages.

These are modern times. We have Aegis ships, anti-ballistic missile missiles, and satellites that monitor such things.

Let's suppose we decide for a "belt and suspenders" approach that some additional pickets might be a good idea - could we use long lingering UAVs akin to the solar power NASA Pathfinder to keep an eye on things? Of

NASA Pathfinder

course we could, in fact, the idea has already been looked at:

In 1993, after ten years in storage, the aircraft was brought back to flight status for a brief mission by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). With the addition of small solar arrays, five low-altitude checkout flights were flown under the BMDO program at NASA Dryden in the fall of 1993 and early 1994 on a combination of solar and battery power.

No much in new thinking under the sun.

U.S. Navy photo by MC1 Corwin M. Colbert)

From the surface of the sea side, there is little reason why unmanned platforms, now being developed for anti-submarine warfare, Sea Hunter cannot also be adapted for use as radar pickets, perhaps with passive sensor characteristics.

The point to all this being that the threat of aircraft launched ASMs or even ASBMs is not a sea change, but merely a logical follow on weapon for a country as geographically limited as is China. And that we've seen threats like this before and found ways to limit them.

Everything old is new again.

As an aside, the U.S. played with Air Launched Ballistic Missiles in the past (1974), see

Laugh of the Day: Beijing pledges ‘long term peace’ in South China Sea

From the Chinese Alibaba owned South China Sea Morning Post come this howlerBeijing pledges ‘long term peace’ in South China Sea where its Asean neighbours also stake claims:

China is hopeful for “new progress” to be made in ongoing talks with the Asean bloc for a code of conduct governing the disputed South China Sea, Premier Li Keqiang said at a summit on Sunday, as other regional leaders called for countries to exercise restraint over the row.
Li’s comments at the twice-yearly Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting comes amid flaring tensions between Vietnam and Beijing over the dispute triggered by a Chinese oil survey vessel that remained within waters claimed by the Southeast Asian country for more than three months.
“We stand ready to work with Asean countries building on the existing foundation and basis to strive for new progress in the [code of conduct], according to the three-year time frame, so as to maintain and uphold long term peace in the South China Sea,” Li said at the start of a plenary session with the 10 Asean leaders.

This bit of double talk - after all, which country is the one stirring up tension with its neighbors with excessive claims to rights that violate the other countries territorial and exclusive economic zones (EEZs) - was reported by the SCMP with the accompanying map:

You might notice that China's famous "9 dash line" encroaches on the sovereign waters of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and judging by the SCMP map, the Japanese Senkaku Islands. You might also note that the SCMP map leaves off the EEZs of the Philippines and Malaysia and Japan. For those, we need another map, this one from the Voice of America :

Or perhaps this one from the American Center for Democracy:

Recall that the claims of all parties, are in part, based on assertions of ownership of various islands or rocks in the SCS. China also bases its claims on a theory of historical usage. China claims were rejected by an international tribunal. As with so much else that is modern, China disavows that ruling:

China said it did not recognize the ruling, which it described as "null and void." The case was brought by the Philippines over China’s vast territorial claims and island-building in the region.

The ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, is the first to address competing claims and interests among a half-dozen countries fronting the South China Sea.

The panel said any historic rights to resources that China may have had were invalid if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a United Nations treaty.

The tribunal also ruled that China caused “irreparable harm” to the marine environment, “unlawfully” interfered with fishermen from the Philippines, and engaged in a massive land-reclamation and island-building campaign that is “incompatible” with international obligations.

In fact, Mr. Li has been pretty belligerent:

China is committed to peace but cannot give up “even one inch” of territory that the country’s ancestors left behind, Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday during his first visit to Beijing.

Xi’s remarks underscored deep-rooted areas of tension in Sino-U.S. ties, particularly over what the Pentagon views as China’s militarization of the South China Sea, a vital transit route for world trade.

"Long term peace" in Chinese terms means acceding to all its demands.

Messages from China - One Clear and One Odd

First the clear signal We Don't Like Your FONOPS and Exercises in the South China Sea so we'll show off our anti-ship ballistic missile and demonstrate we lied when we said we wouldn't militarize those islands we made in the SCS.

China's military conducted a flight test of an anti-ship ballistic missile in the contentious South China Sea last weekend in violation of a pledge four years ago by President Xi Jinping not to militarize the waterway.
***
China also may have conducted the provocative missile test in reaction to the recent U.S.-Japan naval exercises in the South China Sea.

Well, of course. It's a warning shot across the bow.

The odd message? China Raises Security Warning on Ships Plying Malacca Strait
:

China raised the security level for its vessels heading through the

Strait of Malacca, a key Asian trade route and major oil choke point.

The transport ministry advised Chinese-flagged ships to take heightened security steps and increased its security warning to level three, according to a copy of a July 2 notice posted on a website affiliated with the ministry.

Three is the highest security level in Chinese shipping regulations, and one above a warning issued after recent attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing government notifications. The ministry wasn’t immediately able to comment.

Things have been pretty calm piracy-wise in the Strait of Malacca in recent years, so this is a head shaker.

Lloyds List Maritime Intel headline says China raises attack threat in Malacca Straits to highest level:

Shipping companies are asked by authorities in Beijing to increase the security level on ships transiting the Straits of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest waterways. Cosco Shipping’s tanker unit has warned its staff about possible attacks from some Indonesian gangs.

But suppose you are China and you decide that the chokepoints through which your vital oil supplies flow are potentially threatened by forces that may attempt to enforce an embargo on - say - Iranian crude oil. After all, 78% of your oil passes through chokepoints.

Given that possibility, and looking to the U.S. Carter Doctrine for a historic parallel, might you decide to gin up a "threat" which would -um - require you to provide armed escort vessels for your tankers heading to and through such chokepoints? What better threat than "Indonesian gangs?"

In short, is this a Chinese setup to intrude in the state waters of Indonesia and Malaysia with warships as a preemptive move against such an embargo and to set the precedent that China can and will do what it wants to protect its "vital national interests" in such chokepoints?

By sending escort ships to protect its tankers China would take another one of those minor steps that seems innocuous but which has major ramifications. They don't even have to be PLAN ships, but could be Chinese Coast Guard ships to begin with.

Messages.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: The Pacific Story - "The Milk and Meat of the Far East" (1946)

Soybeans:

Soybeans originated in Southeast Asia and were first domesticated by

Chinese farmers around 1100 BC. By the first century AD, soybeans were grown in Japan and many other countries.

You might have heard of a trade dispute with China, China halts purchases of U.S. soybeans, report says:

China is reportedly putting purchases of U.S. soybeans on hold amid the growing trade war with the U.S., according to a report from Bloomberg News. As the world's largest soybean buyer, China's move could ramp up the economic pressure on American farmers.


China doesn't plan to cancel orders it's already made, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Even though China had agreed earlier this year to buy 10 million tons of U.S. soybeans, the purchases have halted, with about 7 million tons of soybeans yet to be delivered to China, Bloomberg noted.

China may make up for a halt to U.S. soybeans by buying more from Brazil according to this Press release from Business Wire:

It is expected that with an expanding population and improving living standards, the demand for soybeans in China will continue to grow in the next few years. As the domestic soybean yields can hardly be increased, over 80% soybean consumption will rely on imports.

There are many uncertainties in the Sino-U.S. trade war. If China and the U.S. can reach a compromise on bilateral trade, in 2019, U.S. soybean imports to China may rebound rapidly; otherwise, the tariffs will remain at the current level or be increased, and there will be a surge in the prices and a plummet in the volume of U.S. soybeans imported to China.

Even if Chinese importers turn their attention to countries such as Brazil, the soaring demand will push up the prices of soybeans from these countries and press Chinese importers in cost. Overall, the ongoing Sino-U.S. trade war will increase the cost of importing soybeans, which means that Chinese consumers will have to pay more for soybean oil, bean products, dairy products, pork, eggs, etc.

"US-China Confrontation Will Define Global Order" - Victor Davis Hanson

Interesting read at the Hoover Institution -Victor Davis Hanson: US-China Confrontation Will Define Global Order. Some of the better thoughts:

... Trump believes that if present trends are not reversed, China could

in theory catch and surpass the US. And as an authoritarian, anti-democratic superpower, China's global dominance would not be analogous to the American-led postwar order, but would be one in which China follows one set of rules and imposes a quite different set on everyone else—perhaps one day similar to the system imposed on its own people within China.
***
China does not honor patents and copyright laws. It still exports knock-off and counterfeit products. It steals research and development investment through a vast array of espionage rings. It manipulates its currency.

Its government companies export goods at below the cost of production to grab market share. It requires foreign companies to hand over technology as a price of doing business in China. And, most importantly, it assumes, even demands, that Western nations do not emulate its own international roguery—or else.

The result is a strange paradox in which the United States and Europe assume that China is an international commercial outlaw, but the remedy is deemed worse than the disease. So, many Western firms make enormous profits in China through joint projects, and so many academic institutions depend on China students, and so many financial institutions are invested in China, that to question its mercantilism is to be derided as a quaint nationalist, or a dangerous protectionist, or a veritable racist. China is an astute student of the Western science of victimology and always poses as a target of Western vindictiveness, racism, or puerile jealousy.
***
Global naval dominance is not in the Chinese near future. Its naval strategy is more reminiscent of the German Kriegsmarine of 1939 to 1941, which sought to deny the vastly superior Royal Navy access at strategic points without matching its global reach. China is carving out areas where shore batteries and coastal fleets can send showers of missiles to take out a multibillion-dollar American carrier. And its leasing of 50 and more strategically located ports might serve in times of global tensions as transit foci for armed merchant ships. But for now they do not have the capabilities of the American carrier or submarine fleet or expeditionary Marine forces—so the point is to deny America reach, not to emulate its extent.

Thought-provoking and, in my humble view, spot on.

An outlaw nation that seeks to revive the idea that it is the "center" of civilization and that all other nations owe some sort of obeisance to it needs to get a better grip on how cooperative engagement works to make the world better for all of us.

Sadly, with Europe's apparent lack of interest in becoming anything more than an administrative, politically correct gaggle, once again the key player in calling out China's outrageous contact is the U.S.

UPDATE: Well, at least one article in Foreign Affairs says Europe is going to resist China in some way Why Europe Is Getting Tough on China:

. . .an effective coalition to manage China’s rise can no longer center on Asian security partnerships alone but must now include the world’s principal concentrations of economic power, technological progress, and liberal democratic values. Among these are many of the United States’ partners in the Indo-Pacific, such as Australia, India, and Japan. But the European Union and its major member states are also becoming increasingly critical U.S. counterparts in dealing with China.
***
As next week’s EU-China summit approaches, Europe has begun to fundamentally rethink its China policies. The shift is so substantial than even seasoned Asia hands have described it as a “revolution.” Despite differences among the EU member states, the overall thrust of the change is in convergence with the new U.S. approach. As recently as three years ago, member states resisted even modest changes to strengthen EU trade defense instruments, despite the flood of Chinese steel imports. The notion of an EU-level mechanism to scrutinize Chinese investments was still anathema to most European leaders. If the United States in early 2016 had suggested closer coordination in restricting Chinese access to Western technologies, a common public front on China’s non-market practices, or cooperation on infrastructure financing as a counterbalance to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), European allies would have responded with a bemused rebuff.

The same logic that has driven the U.S. policy shift, however, has led Europe to change its stance. In March, European heads of state debated a new European Commission strategy paper that describes China as an “economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.” The proposals in the paper would change policies in areas ranging from procurement to data, antitrust rules to telecommunications, industrial strategy to artificial intelligence.
***
What accounts for the shift in European thinking? No doubt political and security developments have played a role—from China’s deepening authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping to its efforts to extend political influence in Europe. The strongest drivers of the change, however, are economic. Europe has lost hope that China will reform its economy or allow greater access to its markets, and at the same time, China’s state-backed and state-subsidized actors have advanced in sectors that Europe considers critical to its economic future.

It's always about the money and it always seems to come very late.

Fun with China in the Caribbean

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Ben Tannenbaum - Filling the Void: China’s Expanding Caribbean Presence

Over the past decade, China has steadily increased spending on major infrastructure

projects in the Caribbean. This provides an opportunity for Chinese firms to expand to markets in the Western Hemisphere it had previously ignored.[4] However, Chinese investment levies significant obligations on its Caribbean partners.
****
However, these Chinese investments come with major obligations and have serious repercussions for their Caribbean recipients. In exchange for building its Jamaican highway, the China Harbor Engineering Company received a 50-year toll concession in addition to land grants alongside the route.[16] Prominent members of the Jamaican opposition have lamented both the high toll prices and the fact that China will receive this fare revenue.[17] In addition, rather than use local laborers, the company brought in nearly 1,000 workers and engineers from China to build the highway. Adding to the complications, Chinese contractors receive significant advantages over local Jamaican firms.[18] Considering Jamaica’s already substantial debt obligation, this investment windfall appears unlikely to ease the island’s foreign dependence.

Along similar lines, the Bahamas may not reap many of the intended benefits from the grand Baha Mar resort. Baha Mar’s construction took a circuitous path, with lawsuits forcing prominent Bahamian investors into bankruptcy.[19] Like with the Jamaican highway, Chinese workers rather than locals received most of the construction jobs.[20] In addition, the Baha Mar investment agreement came with advantageous terms heavily weighted towards Beijing-backed companies.[21] Chinese investment took an even more perverse turn in Guyana. An SOE hired to build a wood processing plant violated Guyana’s labor laws by underpaying local workers.[22] China’s Caribbean involvement does not represent an altruistic Sino Marshall Plan. Beijing talks about “win-win,” but actually emphasizes “China winning, and if Latin America will go along with what China wants, that’s good too.”[23] China expects tangible return on investment and arranges favorable deals to maximize profit. This coldly pragmatic outreach imposes serious constraints to China’s Caribbean trade partners.
****
China’s Caribbean outreach also has a military dimension. For example, Trinidad & Tobago recently purchased naval patrol vessels from the People’s Liberation Army.[27] Likewise, China has provided equipment such as tents, uniforms, and binoculars to the Jamaican military.[28] The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, and Guyana and have also discussed military collaboration with the PLA.[29] Such military agreements indicate a strong growth in Chinese security engagement with the Caribbean. Admittedly, these deals remain much smaller than the economic investments, and according to Ward China recognizes that “military [aid] isn’t its best option to gain allies” compared with infrastructure spending.[30] Nevertheless, such agreements represent a significant increase in foreign military engagement with the Caribbean. Any Chinese military deals in the Western Hemisphere carry a substantial symbolic punch and counter America’s regional hegemony.

China’s Caribbean diplomacy has a few key goals. First, as noted, the economic deals represent an opportunity for financial gain. The impositions placed on Caribbean recipients provide favorable conditions for the Chinese investors. Secondly, China hopes to potentially flip some of the five Caribbean countries that currently recognize Taiwan.[31] Third, and most important, China can use its Caribbean outreach to advance its broader vision of development and international relations.[32]

Influence ops.

I note that the Chinese "plan" to build an alternative to the Panama canal in Nicaragua is not mentioned, perhaps because it may be permanently stalled but probably ought to be thought about, if it's not a environmental disaster, it seems mostly a huge power and wealth grab by the national government "leadership" in their revolutionary zeal.

Well worth the full read.

The key takeaway is that China is working right next door.  Also worth noting that the U.S. reestablished the 4th Fleet in 2008, as set out here.

 Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships are being assigned to NavSta Mayport, FL, which puts them closer to the Caribbean.

They would seem to be good ships for the Caribbean - not very threatening and good for "friendship" visits.

Friday Film: "Seapower in the Pacific" (1946)

This Rand report from 2013 may be of interest:

Breaking Chinese Blackmail Chips : "Japan team maps 'semi-infinite' trove of rare earth elements" and the world is better off

Reported by the Japan Times , a very big story for the future of technology - Japan team maps 'semi-infinite' trove of rare earth elements

Japanese researchers have mapped vast reserves of rare earth elements in deep-sea mud, enough to feed global demand on a “semi-infinite basis,” according to a new study.

The deposit, found within Japan’s exclusive economic zone waters, contains more than 16 million tons of the elements needed to build high-tech products ranging from mobile phones to electric vehicles, according to the study, released Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports.

The team, comprised of several universities, businesses and government institutions,

U.S. Navy photo

surveyed the western Pacific Ocean near Minamitori Island.

In a sample area of the mineral-rich region, the team’s survey estimated 1.2 million tons of “rare earth oxide” is deposited there, said the study, conducted jointly by Waseda University’s Yutaro Takaya and the University of Tokyo’s Yasuhiro Kato, among others.

The finding extrapolates that a 2,500-sq. km region off the southern Japanese island should contain 16 million tons of the valuable elements, and “has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world,” the study said.

The area reserves offer “great potential as ore deposits for some of the most critically important elements in modern society,” it said.

This discovery seems to free Japan and other countries from being blackmailed by China, which has, it is alleged, threatened to or actually cut off the export of rare earth elements to countries in order to force them to alter policies or engage in Chinese approved actions. Here's a report from 2010:

Beijing denied reports it had prevented shipments of the rare minerals that many of Japan's top exporters, such as the world's biggest automaker Toyota, rely on to make cutting-edge products ranging from car batteries to computers.

But traders in Tokyo said China had blocked exports to Japan of key minerals by slowing down administrative procedures in ports in Shanghai and Guangzhou to prevent materials being loaded on ships.

"We heard from our officials in China that the shipping of rare earths (to Japan) was suspended on September 21," a spokesman for Japanese trading house Sojitz in Tokyo told AFP.

Japan on Friday said it would release a Chinese fishing boat captain arrested earlier this month after a collision between his trawler and two Japanese coastguard vessels in a disputed area of the East China Sea.

In addition, China has "adjusted" export quotas on occasion - thus increasing the price of these elements, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in China Cuts Export Quota on Rare-Earth Metals (also in 2010):

China cut its quotas on first-half exports of rare-earth metals around 35%, a move likely to feed trade tensions and concerns among global buyers after an even deeper cut late this year.

China supplies around 95% of the world's rare-earth metals, which are used in high-tech batteries, television sets, mobile phones and defense products. Beijing's decision to cut export quotas by 72% for this year's second half sparked criticism that China was taking undue advantage of its position to raise prices.
***
China's export quotas are stoking trade tensions less than a month before Chinese President Hu Jintao visits with U.S. President Barack Obama. "We are very concerned about China's export restraints on rare-earth materials," a spokeswoman from the U.S. Trade Representative's office said Tuesday. "We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue."

In trade talks this month, U.S. trade officials were unable to persuade China to ease restrictions on rare-earth metals, according to a USTR report to Congress released last week. The report said the U.S. will continue to press Beijing on the issue and would consider bringing the matter to the World Trade Organization.

Some 2013 analysis from Amy King and Shiro Armstrong here:

China has managed to dominate the global rare earth metal market because it can produce rare earths at low cost due to distorted factor markets that suppress prices. In the case of rare earths, cheap land, energy and labour (unregulated against workplace dangers) minimise costs, and severe environmental damage are not factored into the cost of production. Chinese policy-makers have been risking WTO action by gradually reducing the production of rare earth metals instead of addressing the underlying failures in labour and environmental standards. In August 2010, at a meeting with Japanese business leaders at a Japan-China economic forum, Chinese Minister of Commerce Chen Deming cited Chinese concerns about environmental protection and national security as the reason for this decision.

China now has to demonstrate to the WTO that the restrictions on production and exports were in fact directed at cleaning up the industry and addressing its serious environmental impact, not some misguided attempt to restrict global supply.

Given what we know of China's level of concern over enviornmental matters, I would think such proof might prove hard to come by. Further, it is difficult to say it is a "misguided attempt to restrict glogal supply" when such a level of control comports very well with the types of power levers China's leadership loves to pull and their general "bully boy" approach to things. Reminds on of OPEC in the days before the U.S. fracking business broke their oil supply scam.

Thus the Japanese discovery seems to break the risk of that blackmail and breaks that lever. Nice!

Topic for Discussion: ""How to Meet the Strategic Challenge Posed by China"

How to Meet the Strategic Challenge Posed by China from David P. Goldman in Hillsdale College's Imprimis

China poses a formidable strategic challenge to America, but we should keep in mind that it is in large part motivated by insecurity and fear. America has inherent strengths that China does not. And the greatest danger to America is not a lack of strength, but complacency.
***
China, like Russia, responds to its past humiliation by challenging American power. It would be naïve to expect the Chinese or the Russians to be our friends; the best we can hope for is peaceful competition and occasional cooperation in matters of mutual concern. But it is also important to recognize that American policy errors exacerbate their suspicion and distrust.
***
Here in the West, we have a concept of rights and privileges that traces back to the Roman Republic—we serve in the army, we pay taxes, and the state has certain obligations in return. There is no such concept in China. Beijing rules by whim. The Chinese do whatever the emperor—or today, the Communist Party—asks, hoping they will be rewarded. But there is no sense of anything deserved. The idea of the state held together by a common interest as in Cicero, or by a common love as in St. Augustine, is unknown in China. The imperial power is looked on as a necessary evil. The Chinese had an emperor for 3,000 years, and when they didn’t have an emperor they killed one another. It’s all very well to lecture the Chinese about the benefits of Western democracy, but most Chinese believe they need the equivalent of an emperor to prevent a reprise of the Century of Humiliation.
***
Along with ensuring internal stability at all costs, China’s leaders are determined to make China impregnable from the outside. We hardly hear the term South China Sea these days, because that sea has become a Chinese lake. It has become a Chinese lake because the Chinese have made it clear they will go to war over it. There’s a Chinese proverb: “Kill the chicken for the instruction of the monkey.” China has an even greater concern over Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party is terrified that a rebel province like Taiwan can set in motion centrifugal forces that the Party will be unable to control. So the adhesion of Taiwan to the Chinese state—the imperial center—is for the Chinese government an existential matter. They will go to war over it. By demonstrating their willingness to fight over the South China Sea, they are demonstrating that they will fight all the more viciously over Taiwan.
***
China’s “One Belt, One Road” policy, announced by President Xi in

Source

2013, is a plan to dominate industry throughout Eurasia—both by land (belt) and by sea (road).
***
...And what they propose to do with “One Belt, One Road” is repeat that experiment throughout all of Asia—to Sinofy every country from Turkey to Southeast Asia.
***
Turkey plans to be a cash-free society in five years. Chinese telecommunications companies are rebuilding the Turkish broadband network. Turkey has given up on the West and is becoming the western economic province of China.

The impact of what China is doing is felt all over the world. Former allies of the U.S., including former NATO members, are orienting towards China. Russia—which has become totally dependent on China—has quadrupled its energy exports to China, providing China with land-based energy imports in case the U.S. tries interfering with seaborne energy traffic.

Worth reading and pondering the whole thing.

Australia ‘wait and see’ on China's "Belt and Road" Fantasy - ur - Initiative? Akbar's Warning

Interesting piece from the Aussie Lowy Institute's "The Interpreter" Belt and Road: The case for ‘wait and see’

. . . BRI raises bigger questions about the kind of regional economic and security order we would like to see in the Indo-Pacific. It is telling that BRI is organised on a 'hub-and-spokes' model, despite Chinese claims that it is somehow 'multilateral' in form. The 'One Belt' and 'One Road' run back to One Capital – Beijing – and joining BRI would require signing a bilateral memorandum of understanding with China rather signing up to some kind of internationally negotiated, rules-governed, multilateral institution. This speaks volumes about China's ambitions under Xi, particularly the desire for a Sino-centric economic order in which Beijing decides who gets trading and financial privileges from China, and who does not.

Sounds a lot like flypaper.

Or, as Admiral Akbar put it:



It all makes sense if you think of China as the "Middle Kingdom" and the rest of the world as tribute-paying barbarians.

Food Fight: Pirate Fishing Boats to be Shunned

"Tens of countries sign up to shut pirate fishers out of their ports" reports The Guardian's Emma Bruce:

. . . a momentous new treaty, led by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), aims

to shut down this convenient network. Known as the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the treaty, which comes into full force on 5 June, requires signatory countries to inspect or stop suspicious fishing vessels from entering their ports. Under the banner of the rule, countries that have signed now hold a legal obligation to, quite literally, leave illegal fishers out in the cold.

Over the past several years, the effort to get the treaty ratified has been quietly ticking away in the background, as countries have been slowly adding their names to the list of signatories. Recently, a spate of newcomers—Gambia, Sudan, Thailand, and Tonga among them—pushed the number above the 25 required to bring the treaty into force. And last week it reached 30 signatories, a total that includes the United States, and the European Union, which counts as one entity.

The PSMA completely changes the focus of enforcement. Whereas in the past, the battle against pirate fishing has been fought predominantly on the waves, requiring huge resources, manpower, and time to track mostly elusive pirate fishers, this new rule turns ports into the first line of defence.

Gee, I wonder what country's fishing fleet is the biggest violator of such fishing laws?

See here. And here:

Some 294 Chinese fishing boats and 2,905 Chinese fishermen have been caught so far this year illegally fishing in Korean territorial waters.

Oh, and this gCaptain report, South Africa Arrests Chinese Squid Poaching Ships:

South Africa’s navy has detained three Chinese ships with around 100 crew on board on suspicion of illegal squid fishing, officials said on Monday.

The ships were spotted on Friday having entered South Africa’s 200 nautical mile economic exclusion zone without permits. When South African officials asked the ships to sail to port they attempted to flee but were eventually captured.

“We cannot tolerate the plundering of our marine resources, which are a source of food security,” Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Senzeni Zokwana said in a statement.

“We are also looking into the sudden influx of these vessels in our waters.”

The three vessels – Fu Yuan Yu 7880, Fu Yang Yu 7881 and Run Da 617 – had a combined total of almost 600 tonnes of squid when the navy escorted them to shore. Inspectors found all three ships had no permits to fish locally.

The Chinese lack respect for other people's property while loudly proclaiming non-existent rights for themselves.

This cannot be allowed to stand or it's back to primitive "red in tooth and claw" lawlessness.

Screw FONOPS - Let's Play Hardball in the South China Sea

The South China Sea is not now, nor should it ever become, a Chinese "lake."

Allowing China to have its way in the region is not good for international commerce, surrounding nations and the bodes ill for further Chinese expansionism as it asserts some fabricated "historical usage" right to waters that it sailed in "once upon a time." That "once upon a time" ended hundreds of years ago when China, due to internal reasons, abandoned the high seas and ended its exploration of the world.

Now, however, having read Mahan and studied its position in the world, China has decided that its "manifest destiny" lies in invading both international waters and the domestic waters of its neighbors to force them into a world where their adjacent seas are dominated by Chinese warships (including its large, aggressive "Coast Guard") as well as by a militia force of fishing vessels. Why? To create a 'strategic strait'?

"The logical conclusion drawn from China's adding ... islands in the southern part of the South China Sea with military-sized runways, substantial port facilities, radar platforms and space to accommodate military forces is that China's objective is to dominate the waters of the South China Sea at will," Peter Dutton, professor and director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, said in a February speech at London's Chatham House.

"Building the islands is therefore, in my view, a significant strategic event," he said. "They leave the potential for the South China Sea to become a Chinese strait, rather than an open component of the global maritime commons."

Tuoi Tre News

The proof of this Chinese approach is daily recounted in news reports of the shouldering or ramming non-Chinese fishing vessels, in the aggressive response of Chinese military forces to military aircraft and ships transiting in what the rest of the world recognizes as "international waters" but which the Chinese are intent on grabbing. See Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea from the Washington Post:

Having made a “rebalancing” toward Asia a pillar of his foreign policy, President Obama may face a fateful test from China in his final months in office. President Xi Jinping already broke a promise he made to Mr. Obama not to militarize islets his regime has been building up in two parts of the South China Sea. Now Beijing appears to be contemplating building a base on a contested shoal just 150 miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines. A failure by the administration to prevent this audacious step could unravel much of what it has done to bolster U.S. influence in the region.

Disputed islands per Inhabit.com (red flags with yellow star = Vietnam; red/blue striped flag = Malaysia; other red/white/blue flag = Philippines; red flag with star in upper left = China)

Chinese development of Scarborough Shoal, a collection of rocks and coral reefs it seized from the Philippines four years ago, would escalate its already-belligerent behavior in the South China Sea in a number of ways. Until now, Beijing’s landfill work and construction of airstrips have occurred on islets it already controlled that are considerably closer to the Chinese mainland. Scarborough Shoal lies about 500 miles from China. A base there could allow Chinese radar and missiles to threaten Manila, as well as Philippine bases where U.S. forces are positioned.

Perhaps most importantly, the Chinese venture would concretize Beijing’s refusal to abide by international law in resolving territorial disputes with its neighbors.

The nations surrounding the South China Sea (SCS) are either arming themselves or inviting allies to "come back" and show a level of possible force.

One response of the United States has been to sail naval vessels into the SCS and conduct "Freedom of Navigation Operations" or "FONOPS."

These SCS FONOPS are discussed in a National Interest article by Zack Cooper and Bonnie S. Glaser, How America Picks Its Next Move in the South China Sea which describes the U.S.'s tiptoeing in and around the Chinese island building and aggression in the SCS. This is certainly a nice, nuanced approach to the situation, sending signals that are meant to warn the Chinese but without raising the stakes too high.

It also isn't working.

Fiery Cross Reef

The Chinese have moved from area to area, building military bases on artificial island after artificial island, with the latest efforts in the Spratly Islands.

As noted in several of the links above, China and the Philippines are awaiting a ruling from from an arbitration panel over the Chinese claims to the SCS - a ruling China has already denounced, despite many good reasons why it shouldn't.

As was discussed during one of the Midrats podcasts, Episode 321: The Year of the Monkey in the South China Sea w/Toshi Yoshihara (starting about 16:21), China views international law as not being binding because, it does not reflect Chinese "traditions." but rather "Western legal traditions" because of differing historical perspectives - China wants to start with "history first" as Dr. Yoshihara expressed it.

History may not be "bunk" but certain "historical events" are completely ignored by the Chinese as the make their claims, including World Wars I and II, and the last 70+ years of free access to the seas granted to the Chinese around the world brought to them courtesy of the Western world, especially by the U.S. and its allies.

When China was building up its large merchant shipping force, who was protecting freedom of the seas?

Hint - it wasn't the Chinese navy.

If any country could have made the SCS into a "lake" it would have been the U.S. following WWII - but which, instead, backed out of the area.

 China, not content with a free sea, is trying to fill what it perceives as a void and is not getting much in the way of push-back.

It's time the international community did something stronger than FONOPS, which are weak tea at best.

Sea Launch  Odyssey company photo

My modest proposal is to send a properly modified self-propelled drilling rig into the area and have it anchor itself at or near one of those SCS rock formations that China claims but which are generally not uncovered by the sea. Man the thing with scientists who ought to be screaming their heads off about the changing of the ecological state of the SCS by the Chinese island building campaign. Fly the UN flag. Support it from the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and

Ocean Odyssey before modifications

any other SCS stakeholders.

In short, it is time to quit playing soft games with the Chinese and move to hardball. Time to challenge every encroachment. Time to move to a higher level of activity. Time to increase the signal strength, if signaling is still needed.

Use this "sea base" as the locus of naval exercises involving those stakeholders and Aussies, Japanese, South Koreans and anyone else who chooses to play - except the Chinese.

Oh. and by the way, we need to take a look at Guam's status, too. 51st state. anyone?

Time to re-look at building up Midway? Wake Island?

Hardball.