The U.S. Navy announced on Tuesday that the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group had entered the South China Sea for “routine operations” amid a Chinese maritime militia with the Philippines. The provocation of China comes because Russia has increased its powers near Ukraine. The Biden administration may try early on whether its model of liberal multilateralism could deter revisionist forces working against American interests.
The Philippines began sounding the alarm last month about Chinese military boats, which at one point occupied a total of 220 Whitsun Reef west of the archipelago. The naval equivalent of Russia’s ‘little green males’, China’s military-associated floats, could present themselves as fishing fleets to give Beijing credible denial, as it entrenches itself in disputed waters.
According to an analysis by two researchers from the US Naval War College last week, “there is no evidence that they fished at all during these laser-focused operations, but any indication of trolling for territorial claims.”
For more than a decade, China has been moving aggressively to establish dominance in the waters around the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan, to build military installations and to harass commercial vessels from other countries. In 2016, an international court ruled that China was violating the law in the South China Sea. The Trump administration last summer approved businesses involved in the construction of illegal islands there.
China seems to be slowing down its military build-up on the islands, but now it can be resumed. It seems determined to dominate the waterways of Southeast Asia, which would, among other things, put it in a stronger position to invade Taiwan. To slow down or reverse the process will require coordination with the “quartet” – Japan, Australia and India – as well as Southeast Asian countries whose sovereignty is directly violated by the invasions. Vietnam was one of the most pronounced Southeast Asian countries that exposed China’s maritime adventure.