{"id":13277,"date":"2015-10-12T08:45:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T13:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13277"},"modified":"2015-10-12T08:45:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T13:45:47","slug":"obama-wont-back-down-after-chinese-threat-sends-u-s-warships-to-contested-islands-in-matter-of-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13277","title":{"rendered":"Obama Won’t Back Down After Chinese Threat, Sends U.S. Warships To Contested Islands In “Matter Of Days”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama Won’t Back Down After Chinese Threat, Sends U.S. Warships To Contested Islands In “Matter Of Days”<\/a><\/h3>\n

On Friday,\u00a0we reported<\/a>\u00a0the latest provocation in what has truly become a very dangerous, if largely pointless, staring contest between Beijing and Washington over China\u2019s reclamation of land in The South China Sea.<\/p>\n

Responding to suggestions that the US was set to sail warships around the islands Beijing has constructed atop reefs in the Spratlys, China served noticed that it would \u201cnever allow any country to violate China’s territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight<\/em>.\u201d This was simply a formalized version of the more concise phrasing the PLA navy used when they instructed the pilots flying a US spy plane to \u201cGo now!<\/em>\u201d when it ventured too close to Fiery Cross earlier this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not immediately clear what China intends to do with the islands and further, it\u2019s not entirely clear why anyone should necessarily care if Beijing wants to build \u201csand castles\u201d in the middle of the ocean, but then again, for America\u2019s regional allies the land reclamation efforts look a lot an attempt to build a series of military outposts by creating sovereign territory where there was none thereby effectively redrawing maritime boundaries and so, big brother in Washington is set to step in in order to protect vital shipping lanes.<\/p>\n

Of course having already said that the navy plans to sail ships into the waters around the islands, the US can ill-afford to allow China\u2019s \u201cwe won\u2019t tolerate that<\/em>\u201d pronouncement to deter the Pentagon because the optics around that would be terrible at a time when the world is already questioning the strength and resolve of the US military. So the ships will indeed sail. Here\u2019s\u00a0WSJ<\/a>:<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama Won’t Back Down After Chinese Threat, Sends U.S. Warships To Contested Islands In “Matter Of Days” On Friday,\u00a0we reported\u00a0the latest provocation in what has truly become a very dangerous, if largely pointless, staring contest between Beijing and Washington over China\u2019s reclamation of land in The South China Sea. Responding to suggestions that the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3306,2045,130,9791,9790,669,1439,9789,6776,865,877,4318],"class_list":["post-13277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-barack-obama","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-peoples-liberation-army","tag-pla","tag-reality","tag-south-china-sea","tag-spratlys","tag-spy","tag-washington","tag-white-house","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13278,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13277\/revisions\/13278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}