{"id":14068,"date":"2015-11-02T19:29:56","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T00:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14068"},"modified":"2015-11-02T19:29:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T00:29:56","slug":"us-will-send-warships-to-china-islands-twice-a-quarter-pentagon-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14068","title":{"rendered":"US Will Send Warships To China Islands “Twice A Quarter”, Pentagon Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Will Send Warships To China Islands “Twice A Quarter”, Pentagon Says<\/a><\/h3>\n

Last week, the US did a silly thing. The Pentagon\u00a0sent the USS Lassen<\/a>\u00a0to Subi Reef in the Spratlys just to see if Washington could sail by China\u2019s man-made islands in the South Pacific without getting shot at.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Subi reef)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(USS Lassen)<\/em><\/p>\n

As ridiculous as that sounds from a kind of \u201clet\u2019s not start World War III<\/em>\u201d perspective, it\u2019s an entirely accurate assessment of Obama\u2019s \u201cfreedom of navigation\u201d exercise. There was no reason whatsoever for the US to be there and the pass-by served no purpose at all other than to test Beijing\u2019s patience.<\/p>\n

To be sure, China isn\u2019t innocent here. They\u2019ve built 3,000 acres of sovereign territory atop reefs in disputed waters and built runways, ports, and cement factories on their new \u201cland\u201d which understandably makes Washington\u2019s regional allies like The Philippines a bit nervous.<\/p>\n

Still, it isn\u2019t as if the PLA is about to invade Australia and it seems likely that if one could listen in at The Pentagon, US officials could probably care less about these \u201csandcastles.” But America\u2019s \u201cfriends\u201d in the region think that \u201cthis\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0the time for courage\u201d (to\u00a0borrow and alter<\/a>\u00a0a classic Gartman-ism), and so, Washington felt compelled to sail a warship by the islands just to prove it could. China didn\u2019t fire on or surround the US-flagged guided missile destroyer, but the PLA did follow it and Beijing subsequently expressed its extreme displeasure at the \u201cexercise.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we noted before and after the \u201cincident\u201d, most \u201cexperts\u201d believe the US will need to keep up the patrols if they\u2019re to be \u201ceffective.\u201d Sure enough, The Pentagon now says destroyers will sail within 12 nautical miles of the islands twice every three months. Here\u2019s\u00a0Reuters<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The U.S. Navy plans to conduct patrols within 12 nautical miles of artificial islands in the South China Sea about twice a quarter, a U.S. defense official said on Monday.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

US Will Send Warships To China Islands “Twice A Quarter”, Pentagon Says Last week, the US did a silly thing. The Pentagon\u00a0sent the USS Lassen\u00a0to Subi Reef in the Spratlys just to see if Washington could sail by China\u2019s man-made islands in the South Pacific without getting shot at. (Subi reef) (USS Lassen) As ridiculous […]<\/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":[2045,130,9791,9790,10422,827,1127,10423,865,4318],"class_list":["post-14068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-peoples-liberation-army","tag-pla","tag-spartly-island","tag-united-states","tag-us-navy","tag-warship","tag-washington","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068","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=14068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14069,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions\/14069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}