The present U.S. approach to countering incremental Chinese aggression in the South China Sea has failed. U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) are not achieving their long-term political-diplomatic objectives of upholding the rule of international law or substantively changing China’s belligerently revisionist attitudes and behavior in the region. But while the cancerous expansion of China’s fortified outposts and coercive maritime presence in the South China Sea is more advanced than when U.S. FONOPs began, there still is time to salvage the situation before key actors either politically recognize China’s ill-gotten gains or capitulate to its continental conception of sovereignty over distant ocean areas.
Center for Maritime Strategy
Hunter Stires
External Source: Proceedings
The present U.S. approach to countering incremental Chinese aggression in the South China Sea has failed. U.S. Navy freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) are not achieving their long-term political-diplomatic objectives of upholding the rule of international law or substantively changing China’s belligerently revisionist attitudes and behavior in the region. But while the cancerous expansion of China’s fortified outposts and coercive maritime presence in the South China Sea is more advanced than when U.S. FONOPs began, there still is time to salvage the situation before key actors either politically recognize China’s ill-gotten gains or capitulate to its continental conception of sovereignty over distant ocean areas.
The full article is available at Proceedings
Hunter Stires, Non-Resident Senior Fellow