The Pentagon’s War Moves against China. US Provocations in the South China Sea
by Fred Goldstein
Global Research
June 01, 2015
The Pentagon in the third week of May sent a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane near Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea — called the East Sea by Vietnam. The Fiery Reef is in the archipelago called the Spratly Islands by the U.S., the Nanchan Islands by China and the Truong Sa Islands by the Vietnamese.
As the U.S. surveillance plane approached the area of the reef, a Chinese radio dispatcher warned: “Foreign military aircraft, this is the Chinese Navy. You are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately!” (Los Angeles Times, May 21)
The U.S. military replied that the plane was over international waters, even though it was close to 12 miles from the reef. “I am a military aircraft conducting lawful activities,” added the U.S. plane. The Chinese warned the spy plane off eight times, to no avail.
The U.S. surveillance flight came less than a week after the USS Fort Worth, a Navy littoral combat ship designed for near-shore operations, passed close to the islands, where the Chinese are dredging sand and building up five reefs.
Provocation part of planned campaign
These were deliberate provocations staged by the Pentagon as part of a planned campaign to escalate Washington’s military pressure on the People’s Republic of China. It is the implementation of the so-called “Asian pivot” announced by President Barack Obama.
According to a May 12 article in the British paper The Guardian, “Ash Carter, the defense secretary, had requested options that included sending ships and aircraft within 12 nautical miles of reefs that China has been building up in the disputed Spratly Islands. …
“‘We are considering how to demonstrate freedom of navigation in an area that is critical to world trade,’ [a] U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that any options would need to be approved by the White House.”
To unfold such a plan under the banner of defending “freedom of the seas” is ludicrous. For one thing, the U.S. is one of the few countries that has not signed the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, although it participated in drafting much of the language.
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