Two US Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait In Dare To Beijing
With US-China trade talks set to resume this week amid what flashing red headlines, Larry Kudlow and Donald Trump’s twitter account remind us every day, if not hour, is a sense of “optimism” about an imminent deal, on Sunday the US navy reminded Beijing to stick to the script (one in which Trump supposedly comes off as a negotiating giant), when it two warships through the hotly contested Taiwan Strait as the Pentagon increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite vocal and often time angry opposition from China.
While the voyage risks further raising tensions with China – at an especially sensitive time for trade negotiations – it will also be viewed by Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.
“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said in a statement. The 112-mile-wide Taiwan Strait separates Taiwan from China. Winking at China, Doss also said there were no unsafe or unprofessional interactions with other countries’ vessels during the transit. Beijing may beg to differ.
Despite an alleged convergence of view on trade between Beijing and DC., Taiwan remains one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions, the future of Huawei and 5G and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom-of-navigation patrols to remind China that the US will never cede implicit control of the world’s most important naval area.
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