Chinese Admiral: “You can sail freely and we can too, but your freedom to sail cannot impact our freedom to sail,” he said, according to the article. “The instant you interfere with our sailing, sorry, but we will block you.”
h/t Mark Collins
Chinese Admiral: “You can sail freely and we can too, but your freedom to sail cannot impact our freedom to sail,” he said, according to the article. “The instant you interfere with our sailing, sorry, but we will block you.”
h/t Mark Collins
There are “rules of the road” for ships at sea just as there for vehicles on land. If both sides adhere to these rules, the Chinese can play chicken all they want. Who cares?
If you like our oceans, you can keep our oceans.
The story is pure rubbish. No navy ever lets foreign warships cruise too close to an aircraft carrier, ever, especially for “observation” purposes. The Cowpens would have expected to be chased away, and it was. Same thing happened dozens of times in the 1980s with the Soviets dogging US carrier groups.
One of the rules of the road in carrier group operations is that the carrier has the right of way, always.
USN version of events…
On December 5, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ship made radio contact with the Cowpens and asked it to leave the area. The USS Cowpens replied that it was in international waters and declined to change course.
The Cowpens was then shouldered by a PLAN Amphibious Dock Ship that suddenly crossed its bow at a distance of less than 500 meters and stopped in the water. The USS Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision.
I noted that it was a tank landing ship that shouldered the Cowpens, not one of the Liaoning’s escorting destroyers or frigates.
Here’s an incident from 25 years ago, skip to the 7min mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDN8lQW08yQ#t=21
Everything old is new again.
The BIG difference in today’s actions is that during the Cold War,the USA was indisputably the Big Guy on the Block,and now,they’re a debt-ridden has-been with a leader whose ability is indescribable.
The US’s military still has teeth, but I wonder about all those Chinese-made microchips in their weapons systems.
China figures it has a large enough military that it no longer has to buy or negotiate access to natural resources. It can simply take them from it’s neighbours.
It military’s ability to project force and it’s willingness to do so is new.
That is why the U.S. is building a major U.S. base in Australia.
That is why Japan and South Korea military budgets are in a major growth mode.
Canada will be forced to ante up it’s naval and air capacity too, if this keeps up.
China should be more wary of the U.S. military capacity but they think all they have to do, is threaten to call in their trillion dollar debt financing of the Obama budget.
They figure playing chicken with Obama, is a game they will win as Obama is one.
This is why Japan et al need a sort of Asian NATO. China’s belligerence is getting worse and it doesn’t help that the US is backing off.
There have been talks about that for years, something will probably come of it when the US does something stupid would be my guess. But since the Philippines is now getting a US airbase back, Japan is quietly talking about getting another new one. And I’ve heard the same for singapore I guess we’ll see.
There was one. It was called SEATO, and it disappeared. Vietnam was the end of it.
Today the most effective blue water harassment tactic available to the Chinese Navy
would be a dense, drifting 1000 junk fishing fleet. They are barely out of a child’s
wading pool in deep water fleet expertise and the so called aircraft carrier is just
an old soviet “thing” turned into a test bed for stuff that will take a decade to reach
a fleet which may or may not ever come into existence. If they get to be extra bitchy
without the goods, perhaps the US could give India an old “real” CV aircraft carrier
as a static test bed/training vessel to “help out”.