Chinese President Xi Jinping is risking a military clash through “aggressive actions” in the international shipping lanes of the South China Sea, according to a top Republican senator.
“The United States wants ‘a shooting war’ with no nation,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “In that region in particular, the only nation that risks that kind of military action is China, through aggressive actions in the South China Sea or towards Taiwan, or some of its other neighbors.”
Cotton offered that statement while touting the Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines, days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Manila to affirm U.S. commitment to the pact. Pompeo’s pledge that the United States would defend the Philippines was welcomed by his diplomatic counterpart, in light of China’s claim to sovereignty over the vast majority of the South China Sea — known as the West Philippine Sea in the Philippines — one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
The country’s top defense official, on the other hand, is questioning whether the treaty improves their security.
“The United States, with the increased and frequent passage of its naval vessels in the West Philippine Sea, is more likely to be involved in a shooting war,” Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Tuesday. “In such a case and on the basis of the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Philippines will be automatically involved.”
Lorenzana, who aired the same worry in December, issued his statement as a public contradiction to Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin. The top diplomat pronounced his government “very assured” by Pompeo’s pledge that the United States would honor the treaty in the event of a Chinese attack, but Lorenzana suggested that Locsin had missed the point.
“It is not the lack of reassurance that worries me,” he said. “It is being involved in a war that we do not seek and do not want.”
That worry arises from a controversy over the Spratly Islands, a small chain of islands and reefs valued by the fishing industry and regarded as a potential trove of oil and natural gas. Since 2014, China has expanded some of the islands and reefs artificially and constructed military bases in the area — even though the islands are also claimed in their entirety by Vietnam and Taiwan, and claimed partially by the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei.
Western powers have increased their naval presence in the region, in order to maintain freedom of navigation in the international waters encompassed by China’s reach for the Spratly Islands.
“China has isolated itself on this question and the United States will continue to defend those freedom of navigation rights,” Cotton said.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman James Risch cautioned against over-stating the risk of a conflict in the contested waterways.
“I am not concerned about us getting in a shooting war and I’m surprised to hear that, really,” the Idaho Republican told the Washington Examiner.
Cotton maintained that the naval operations so alarming to Lorenzana should help prevent a conflict by deterring “an unwise decision” by Beijing to attack vessels from neighboring countries that sail too close to the islands.
“The best way to prevent a shooting war is for our adversaries to know that we stand by all of our treaty obligations and honor our commitments to our allies, like the Philippines and like Japan,” he said.
