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Title: Should We Fight for the Spratlys?
Source:
VDare
URL Source: http://www.vdare.com/articles/should-we-fight-for-the-spratlys
Published: Oct 30, 2015
Author: Pat Buchanan
Post Date: 2015-10-30 11:45:46 by nativist nationalist
Keywords: None
Views: 3501
Comments: 48
Trailed by two Chinese warships, the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen sailed inside the 12-nautical-mile limit of Subi Reef, a man-made island China claims as her national territory. Beijing protested. Says China: Subi Reef and the Spratly Island chain, in a South China Sea that carries half of the world’s seaborne trade, are as much ours as the Aleutians are yours. Beijing’s claim to the Spratlys is being contested by Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan. While Hanoi and Manila have occupied islets and built structures to back their claims, the Chinese have been more aggressive. They have occupied rocks and reefs with troops, dredged and expanded them into artificial islands, fortified them, put up radars and are building air strips and harbors. What the Chinese are about is easy to understand. Having feasted and grown fat on trade surpluses with the United States, the Chinese are translating their economic strength into military power and a new strategic assertiveness. They want to dominate East Asia and all the seas around it. We have been told our warships are unwelcome in the Yellow Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Beijing also claims the Senkakus that Japan occupies, which are covered by our mutual security treaty. And not only is the South China Sea one of the world’s crucial waterways, the fish within can feed nations and the floor below contains vast deposits of oil and gas. Who owns the islands in the South China Sea owns the sea. Moreover, our world has changed since Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan and the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu—and since Bill Clinton sent two U.S. carrier battle groups through the Taiwan Strait. Now we send a lone destroyer inside the 12-mile limit of a reef that, until recently, was under water at high tide. What China is doing is easily understandable. She is emulating the United States as we emerged to become an imperial power. After we drove Spain out of Cuba in 1898, we annexed Puerto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands, where America settlers had deposed the queen, took Wake and Guam, and annexed the Philippines. The subjugation of Filipino resistance required a three-year war and thousands of dead Marines. And the reaction of President McKinley when he heard our Asian squadron had seized the islands: “When we received the cable from Admiral Dewey telling of the taking of the Philippines I looked up their location on the globe. I could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles.” In 1944, General MacArthur, whose father had crushed the Filipino resistance, retook the islands from the Japanese who had occupied them after Pearl Harbor. At the end of the Cold War, however, Manila ordered the United States to get out of Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay naval base. We did as told. Now our Filipino friends want us back to confront China for them, as do the Vietnamese Communists in Hanoi. Before we get ourselves into the middle of their dispute, before we find ourselves in an air war or naval clash with China, we ought to ask ourselves a few questions. First, why is this our quarrel? We have no claim to any of the Spratly or Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. Yet, each of the claimants—Beijing, Taipei, Manila, Hanoi—seems to have maps going back decades and even centuries to support those claims. Besides freedom of the seas, what is our vital interest here? If these islands are Chinese territory, Beijing has the same right to build air and naval bases on them as we do in the Aleutians, Hawaii, Wake and Guam. What do we hope to accomplish by sailing U.S. warships into what China claims to be her territorial waters? While the ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet are superior to those of the Chinese navy, China has more submarines, destroyers, frigates and missile boats, plus a vast inventory of ground-based missiles that can target warships at great distances. In an increasingly nationalist China, Xi Jinping could not survive a climbdown of China’s claims, or dismantlement of what Beijing has built in the South China Sea. President Xi no more appears to be a man to back down than does President Putin. Continued U.S. overflights or naval intrusion into the territorial waters of Chinese-claimed islands are certain to result in a violent clash, as happened near Hainan Island in 2001. Where would we go from there? China today is in trouble. She is feared and distrusted by her neighbors; her economy has lost its dynamism; and the Communist Party is riven by purges and rampant corruption. If we believe this will be the Second American Century, that time is on our side, that Chinese communism is a dead faith, we ought to avoid a clash and show our opposition to Beijing’s excesses, if need be, by imposing tariffs on all goods made in China. China’s oligarchs will understand that message. 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 14.
#1. To: nativist nationalist (#0)
HELL NO! We should be READY to fight for free travel in the seas,though. Pat is wrong,though. Communism isn't failing in China. It has been dead for some long few people there even remember it. The Chinese have been fascists for a couple of decades now.
Why? What does Pat think the Chicoms are gonna do? Charge a toll for all the ships that pass through? Let the Chicoms have their dinky little artificial islands... And if the Chicom's want to invade Korea or Japan or the Phillipines or Indonesia or whereever... just let 'em have those places too... they're more trouble than they's worth.
PLEASE tell me you aren't really that stupid,and this is just a role you are playing on the internet. Economic warfare is war by non-military means,and that is what all the trouble in the Spratley Islands are all about. Do you REALLY think anybody,even in Asia,would give a rabid rats ass about them if they didn't have immense oil and natural gas fields beneath them? And despite the fact that the Clinton,Bush and Obomber Administrations have been busy sucking the Chinese leaders off,a wealthy China may be the greatest threat the world has ever experienced. The FACT is that from the perspective of what passes for a "Free World" these days,communism in China was the best thing that ever happened to the rest of us because it kept them poor and primitive. BTW,none of which means the US should immediately leap to the military aid of any other country in Asia unless we have signed a treaty to do so. Right or wrong,if we have signed a treaty that says we come to their aid using military and other means if they are attacked,we have to go to their aid. Which is why we should be cautious about who we sign treaties with.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestShould We Fight for the Spratlys?
#9. To: sneakypete (#1)
We should be READY to fight for free travel in the seas,though.
Let THEM worry about protecting and maintaining them against tsunamis and global warming's rising sea levels...
Let THEM pay for hunting down modern pirates & searching for missing planes
#14. To: Willie Green (#9)
(Edited)
Why? What does Pat think the Chicoms are gonna do? Charge a toll for all the ships that pass through?
Replies to Comment # 14.
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