War Danger Grows Following New US Provocation
in South China Sea
By James
Cogan
Global Research, May 11, 2016
Region: Asia
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
On Tuesday, in an open military provocation,
the Obama administration authorised the US Navy to send a guided-missile
destroyer into the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone surrounding Chinese-held
Fiery Cross Reef, located in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea.
The operation was carried out on the fraudulent pretext of “freedom of
navigation”—that is, the assertion by US imperialism that it has the right to
send its military forces anywhere it chooses, at any time, in Chinese-claimed
waters.
Yesterday’s action achieved its real aim of
ratcheting up military tensions in the Asia-Pacific. The Chinese military
responded by scrambling at least two J-11 fighter jets. Chinese pilots
reportedly issued warnings to the American destroyer, the USS William P.
Lawrence, to leave Chinese territory or face engagement. The Chinese Navy
dispatched three warships, but there have been no reports that the rival
vessels came into contact.
These developments represent a sharp escalation.
The US Navy carried out a “freedom of navigation” mission last October in
Chinese-claimed waters around Subi Reef in the South China Sea and a second
operation in January, near Triton Island in the Paracel Island chain. On those
occasions, China did not react militarily but issued strongly-worded diplomatic
protests. The response to the intrusion near Fiery Cross Reef indicates that,
from this point on, US provocations will be engaged by Chinese forces, posing
the danger of a military clash.
Fiery Cross Reef is one of the most sensitive
of all the disputed territories. It has been held by China since 1988, but is
still claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan. Tensions have grown since
2011 as a result of the US “pivot to Asia” and Washington’s development of
closer military ties with Vietnam and the Philippines.
In 2014, China deployed several hundred troops
to the reef and initiated a major project to reclaim land from the sea and turn
it into a small artificial island. It has built a port and a 3,300-metre
airfield—the most southern airfield controlled by Beijing. In January 2016,
civilian airliners successfully landed on the reef and it is now regularly used
by Chinese military aircraft.
The message from Washington sent by yesterday’s
operation is clear. US imperialism will continue to stoke up long-standing,
competing claims over territory in the South China Sea to militarily encircle
and destabilise the Chinese regime. The objective of the US ruling elite is not
only to assert military dominance in Asia, but to intimidate Beijing into
pulling back from its ambitions to exert greater global influence and compel it
to make sweeping concessions to American demands on trade and access to Chinese
markets. If Beijing nevertheless continues to assert the regional and global
interests of the Chinese business oligarchs it represents, it will face war.
The timing of the “freedom of navigation”
operation indicates that the message was intended as much for the allies and
“strategic partners” of the United States as it was for the Chinese regime.
It could be only a matter of days before the UN
Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague brings down its ruling on a
US-backed Philippines legal challenge to aspects of China’s claims in the South
China Sea. The court, stacked with the legal appointees of the imperialist
powers, is expected to declare Chinese occupation of certain islets and reefs
“illegal” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Such a
finding will be used by the American government to justify even more aggressive
military operations, most of which will be launched from the new bases to which
it has access in the Philippines. Short-range A-10 assault aircraft are
operating from airfields directly adjacent the South China Sea and warships can
be dispatched from various Philippine ports.
The USS William P. Lawrence entered
Chinese-held waters just hours after Rodrigo Duterte, the fascistic mayor of
Davao City, claimed victory in Monday’s presidential election in the Philippines.
Throughout the campaign, Duterte wavered between militarist rhetoric over the
disputed territories and conciliatory offers to Beijing for bilateral
negotiations and closer economic ties. The US operation is a signal that, by
the time he is sworn in on June 30, Duterte’s administration will face a fait
accompli. The Philippines will be on the front line of a build-up toward open
confrontation.
The freedom of navigation mission also
coincides with the beginning of a volatile and unpredictable election in Australia,
one of the most critical allies and military partners of the United States in
its “pivot to Asia.” The clear aim of the Australian political and media
establishment has been to conduct the election with as little reference to the
dangers of war as possible. Instead, the issue is being pushed into the
limelight and the rival parties pressured to publicly reaffirm their full
backing of Washington.
Defence Minister Marise Payne, representing the
Liberal-National Coalition government, immediately asserted that Australia
“strongly supports” the US actions. The opposition Labor Party, which aligned
Australia with the “pivot” in 2011 when it was in government, and is on record
as advocating that Australian warships carry out independent provocations against
China, is now under pressure to do likewise.
US President Obama will seek to enlist Vietnam
behind stepped-up military operations against Beijing during his state visit to
the country on May 21. This will be followed by top level talks in Japan on May
26–27 with the heads of the six other G7 nations—Japan, the United Kingdom,
Germany, France, Italy and Canada—as well as the head of the European Union. To
the fury of China, the communique issued by the G7 foreign ministers’ summit in
April for the first time declared the G7’s “opposition” to any actions that
raised “tensions” in the South and East China seas. The statement of
Washington’s NATO and Japanese allies was not a reference to the US
provocations, but to China’s reaction.
The deployment of jet fighters against a US
warship indicates that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime concluded it
would escalate its own reactionary preparations for a military confrontation
with the war machine of the US and its allies. It is seeking to defend the
interests of the corrupt oligarchy that developed in China as Mao Zedong and
his political heirs restored capitalist property relations from the 1970s. The
actions of the CCP regime are diametrically opposed to the interests of the
working class—above all the multi-million strong Chinese working class which,
if war breaks out, would face the nightmarish prospect of US nuclear strikes.
The Chinese Defense ministry has announced that
Beijing is going to further intensify tensions. It declared yesterday that the
American actions “proved” that the construction of military infrastructure and
deployment of forces in the South China Sea was “totally justified and very
necessary.” China, it asserted, will increase its naval and air operations in
the region and expand its placement of “various defense capacities.”
While the regime deploys its military in an
ever-more fraught situation, the Chinese state-controlled media is attempting
to generate nationalist fervor over the question of the disputed territory. The
aim is both to divert steadily rising social tensions over inequality and
economic slump into anti-American and anti-Japanese chauvinism, and to drown
out any expression of alarm within the Chinese population over the implications
of a war.
In every country—from the US and China to
Japan, Australia, the Philippines and Vietnam—a catastrophic conflict is being
prepared behind the backs of the working class and youth. This stark reality
adds ever greater urgency to the fight to build a new international anti-war
movement of the working class on the foundation of socialist and
internationalist principles.
The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site
Copyright © James
Cogan, World Socialist Web Site, 2016
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