Posted on 05/15/2015 7:12:25 AM PDT by McGruff
When the U.S. navy sent a littoral combat ship on its first patrol of the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea during the past week, it was watching the skies as well.
The USS Fort Worth, one of the most modern ships in the U.S. navy, dispatched a reconnaissance drone and a Seahawk helicopter to patrol the airspace, according to a little-noticed statement on the navy's website.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Secretary of State John Kerry arrives here on Saturday with a basket of knotty issues he hopes to discuss with Chinese leaders, but increasing tensions over Beijing’s assertive claims in the South China Sea are likely to dominate the two days of scheduled talks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/asia/kerry-china-south-sea-dispute.html
People that refuse to cooperate with police at traffic checkpoints get a lot of grief. People say, why don’t you just answer the cops’ stupid questions and go on their way. The response is that if everyone just acquiesces to them they will keep pushing and trampling our rights.
Well, what the US is doing in the south china sea is exactly what these “troublemakers” are doing at the police checkpoints.
It’s how it’s done.
The US should not get involved in this mess with the South China Sea. It’s easily something that can invoke WW3 considering the long history the coastal Asian countries have had with those islands.
0bama will do whatever he can to hurt this country in any and every way possible.
remember that.
The south china sea is an international sea lane open to navigation. Operating in international waters specifically to assert the right to do so has been a common practice for a very long time when uppitys attempt to claim things that are not agreed to by other countries.
Remember Libya’s line of death? It was an attempt to claim the entire bay area that violated recognized standards for open ocean vs territorial waters. We put ships and aircraft over the line and told em to pound sand.
What the US is doing here is basically the same thing - now...if we start getting into the discussion of who owns the rocks, that’s a different topic all together and one we and others should be open to facilitating to prevent escalation to open warfare that could impact us through trade and shipping limitations.
Good point and you’re right there is a distinction there that I wasn’t picking up on with rights in open waters.
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