U.S. officials must develop plans to “destroy” China’s military installations in the South China Sea, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, to avert the Communist power’s dominance of one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes.
“If they’ve created a missile base that we can destroy, because we can position enough assets in the region that can penetrate defenses and destroy it, then we have neutralized that advantage,” the Florida Republican told the Washington Examiner during a phone interview last week.
That proposal is one aspect of a broader effort to offset China’s rise as a military power, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, where U.S. officials have a heightened wariness about China’s aggression. It’s a more confrontational approach than some of his colleagues think prudent, one likely to exacerbate Chinese sensitivity about American military power in the region. Rubio believes China is pursuing a “strategy of incrementalism” that, if unchecked, will eventually force American leaders into a choice between devastating war and bloodless defeat.
“There has to be a point here where it’s too far,” said Rubio, who sits on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees. “We’re not unnecessarily seeking conflict, and there’s a way to avoid it, and that is to respect the rules. But at some point, we’re going to have to either enforce these rules or we’re going to live in a world that they dominate. And that’s what they’re counting on is that we don’t have the stomach for it. And, in fact, if they conclude we don’t have the stomach for it, they’re likelier to do it.”
U.S.-Chinese relations have been fraught for years, but the adversarial turn has become more pronounced under Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese officials recently used military-grade lasers to cause ‘minor injuries” to two American pilots in Djibouti, according to the Pentagon. More significantly, China deployed anti-ship missiles and other armaments to artificial islands constructed in the South China Sea, to bolster their claims to sovereignty over the historically-international waterways.
“Despite China’s claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapons systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said during a foreign policy conference in Singapore on Saturday. “China’s militarization of the Spratlys [islands] is also in direct contradiction to President Xi’s 2015 public assurances in the White House Rose Garden that they would not do this.”
Chinese officials have been contemptuous of such critiques.
“[C]ertain people in the US are staging a farce of a thief crying ‘stop thief,’” Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Hua Chunying said last week. “The U.S. warships deliberately trespassed into the neighboring waters of China’s relevant islands or reefs from time to time. They prettify it as ‘freedom of navigation operation.’ Does the U.S. truly want the freedom of navigation entitled under the international law? Or does it just want the freedom to do whatever it likes as a hegemon?”
Mattis emphasized that international tribunals have repudiated China’s assertion of sovereignty over the sea lanes, a claim contested by several neighboring countries. “So we do not see it as a militarization by going through what has traditionally been an international water space,” Mattis said. “What we see it as is a reaffirmation of the rules-based order.”
The South China Sea controversy is part of a broader effort by the Chinese government to assert control over its near-borders. The Communist regime has warned American companies not to refer to Hong Kong and Tibet in a way that downplays the central government’s control over the territories, for instance. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., suggested the laser incident was a “brush back pitch” from China in response to the passage of a law encouraging meetings between U.S. leaders and Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province.
“There’s no doubt about it: China wants to be the power in Asia,” Johnson, who also sits on the Foreign Relations panel, told the Washington Examiner. “I think it will be the power in Asia. I don’t think there’s much we can do about that.”
Rubio disagrees.
“If we can help Taiwan’s defenses increase — not to the point where they can win a conflict, but where they could extract a heavy price on any sort of forced unification — that becomes a balancer,” he said. “If we can continue to work alongside with allies in the region — whether its the Japanese, the Koreans, even the Indians — to create force multiplier effects that raise the cost of adventurism, then the Chinese will have to recalibrate their efforts. They’re only going to take what’s available.”
In short, U.S. officials have to use leverage American economic, diplomatic, and military power to remain strong enough to deter Chinese aggression.
“This is not about limiting China; this is about protecting the balance between us,” Rubio said. “China has no history, now or as part of their long-term political civilization, of treating smaller states with equality or with cooperation. In fact, their history and even their practices today tend towards treating smaller weaker states as tributary states, subservient to China’s interest.”
To avoid that outcome, Rubio suggested, U.S. officials have to prepare convincingly for a potential military clash with China. Otherwise, China will “drive us from the region” by gradually asserting tighter control over their sphere of interest, backed by their own military build-up.
“If, God forbid, there’s a military conflict between the U.S. and China, both sides will pay a heavy price,” Rubio said. “But we have to ensure that their price is heavier than ours, from a relative perspective.”
