In April 2001, a jet fighter from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace over the South China Sea. The Chinese pilot was killed in the crash, and the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Hainan Island, where the PRC detained the 24 crew members for 11 days. U. S. officials were taken aback by the vehemence—even shrillness—of China’s protests and insistence on its victimhood in the incident.
The sudden crisis might have been a wake-up call about an alarming turn in the PRC’s foreign policy, but the U.S. very quickly dropped it for the more immediate 9/11 threat exploding in the homeland. Steven Wills, a former Navy officer and now a naval analyst at the Center for Maritime Strategy, says dawning realization of the potential China threat was outshined by the glaring challenge posed by radical Islamic terrorism.
“There seems to have been an understanding within the George W. Bush administration that China was an issue, especially after the EP-3 incident,” Wills says. “I was sitting in the Defense Intelligence Agency at that time, and there was certainly interest moving toward what China was up to. But then 9/11 happened and that fundamentally shifted policy in a different direction.”…
Center for Maritime Strategy
Dr. Steven Wills | Interviewed by Michael Puttré
External Source: Discourse
In April 2001, a jet fighter from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) collided with a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace over the South China Sea. The Chinese pilot was killed in the crash, and the U.S. plane made an emergency landing on Hainan Island, where the PRC detained the 24 crew members for 11 days. U. S. officials were taken aback by the vehemence—even shrillness—of China’s protests and insistence on its victimhood in the incident.
The sudden crisis might have been a wake-up call about an alarming turn in the PRC’s foreign policy, but the U.S. very quickly dropped it for the more immediate 9/11 threat exploding in the homeland. Steven Wills, a former Navy officer and now a naval analyst at the Center for Maritime Strategy, says dawning realization of the potential China threat was outshined by the glaring challenge posed by radical Islamic terrorism.
“There seems to have been an understanding within the George W. Bush administration that China was an issue, especially after the EP-3 incident,” Wills says. “I was sitting in the Defense Intelligence Agency at that time, and there was certainly interest moving toward what China was up to. But then 9/11 happened and that fundamentally shifted policy in a different direction.”…
The full article is available at Discourse
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist