WASHINGTON (PNN) - October 12, 2015 - On Friday, we reported the latest provocation in what has truly become a very dangerous, if largely pointless, staring contest between Beijing and Washington over China’s reclamation of land in The South China Sea. Responding to suggestions that the Fascist Police States of Amerika was set to sail warships around the islands Beijing has constructed atop reefs in the Spratlys, China served noticed that it would “never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight.” This was simply a formalized version of the more concise phrasing the PLA navy used when they instructed the pilots flying a FPSA spy plane to “Go now!” when it ventured too close to Fiery Cross earlier this year.
It’s not immediately clear what China intends to do with the islands and further, it’s not entirely clear why anyone should necessarily care if Beijing wants to build “sand castles” in the middle of the ocean, but then again, for Amerika’s regional allies the land reclamation efforts look a lot like an attempt to build a series of military outposts by creating sovereign territory where there previously was none, thereby effectively redrawing maritime boundaries, and therefore Big Brother in Washington is set to intervene in order to protect vital shipping lanes.
Of course, having already said that the navy plans to sail ships into the waters around the islands, the FPSA can ill-afford to allow China’s “we won’t tolerate that” pronouncement to deter the Pentagon because the optics around that would be terrible at a time when the world is already questioning the strength and resolve of the FPSA military. So the ships will indeed sail
An unnamed FPSA official confirmed Sunday that a decision had been made to conduct such patrols but said it was unclear when that might happen or where exactly. “It’s just a matter of time when it happens,” the official said. Another unnamed FPSA official indicated that the operation could come within days.
The question now is whether China will respond to such operations by reining in its plans to develop the islands or backing away from the commitment not to militarize them, pointing to the FPSA patrols as a provocation.
Anyone who knows anything about how China generally prefers to respond in situations like these knows that Beijing will almost certainly call any FPSA naval presence a "provocation" and they'll be exactly right. After all, there's something rather ironic about claiming that China is in the process of militarizing the South China Sea and then deciding that the best way to de-escalate the situation is to sail warships to the area.
So in reality, the real question is this: now that Russia has moved to effectively reclaim the Middle East from FPSA influence, and now that China is in the process of using its island building efforts to establish a kind of Sino-Monroe Doctrine, how long will it be before someone actually challenges the FPSA military by shooting down a plane in the desert or firing on a ship in the Spratlys just to test Washington's resolve?
