The White House confirmed Wednesday that the Navy deployed a destroyer to a disputed area of the South China Sea on Tuesday.
China has upset its neighbors by building up the Subi Reef in the Spratly archipelago, despite rival claims to the rocky outcrops.
The operation that saw the USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, sail within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef “was the result of a rigorous inter-agency process designed to produce options for leadership,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters on Wednesday. “The president has stated … the United States is going to fly, sail and operate anywhere where international law allows.”
“[W]e would communicate in private to our Chinese counterparts as we would say in public, that these operations are conducted in accordance with international law and applied evenhandedly around the globe,” Schultz added.
The patrol comes after months of mounting tensions between China and the U.S. over China’s growing aggression in some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. President Obama discussed the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his official visit last month but failed to reach agreement.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that “[w]ithout confirming any sort of operational decisions have been made, [President Obama] indicated that the United States would operate, fly or sail anywhere that international law allows,” as Obama stood next to President Xi in the Rose Garden last month. “And that certainly includes the ability of our Navy to operate in international waters.”
“This is a critically important principle, particularly in the South China Sea, because there are billions of dollars of commerce that flow through that region of the world every year, and maybe even more than that, and ensuring the free flow of this commerce and that freedom of navigation of those vessels is protected is critically important to the global economy,” he said.
China has been militarizing islands, reefs, atolls and archipelagos in the South China Sea for more than a year. Recently, Beijing built a runway that can accommodate fighter jets and transport planes, one of four such runways either already built or under construction.
Neighbors ranging from Australia to the Philippines to Brunei to Japan either have rival claims or condemn China’s land seizures in the region.
As part of Obama’s “pivot” to Asia, the majority of Navy assets, 60 percent, will be deployed in the Pacific by 2020.
