Cutting off China from its trading partners and sources of oil, natural gas and other resources could be the best, and least costly, way for the United States to defeat China in a major war.
To that end, the U.S. Navy should prepare to blockade China, according to Bradford Dismukes, a retired Navy captain and political scientist. “Globalization has made China, a great continental power, dependent on the use of the sea and thus vulnerable to coercion from the sea,” Dismukes wrote.
Blockade is an ancient strategy. Surround your enemies. Starve and impoverish them.*
*To Defeat China in War, Strangle its Economy: Expert: Forbes August 24, 2020, by David Axe “Editors Pick"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/08/24/to-defeat-china-in-war-strangle-its-economy/#677bda7131a9
Expert? Forbes? Editors Pick? Loved this part, “That’s easier said than done, of course. Blockading China would require a coordinated effort by the whole of the U.S. government and its closest allies.” Which allies are going to participate?
I’m a big fan of James Bradley's book, The China Mirage. Bradley, a historian, reviews US ignorance and miscalculation concerning Asia, imperialism, etc., which caused one military debacle after another in Asia in the 20th Century. He was an advisor to John Pilger for his video The Coming War with China, available on youtube. He appears in the video.
The South China Sea claims of China are consistently misrepresented as “aggression” in English language sources. The US styles the Permanent Court of Arbitration decision against China as the last word on the subject and conducts it’s naval and air operations accordingly with zero regard for Chinese claims and legal arguments. The principal issue isn’t freedom of navigation as the US claims but rather the sovereignty over the associated 200 nm maritime economic zones that the Chinese claim (Taiwan included) around the Pratas, Spratlys, and Paracels. There are enormous oil and gas fields in the South China Sea, that is the real US interest, a commercial one. When one includes the economic zone around the Chinese island of Hainan, the Chinese claims related historically to the so called 9 Dash line in the South China Sea don’t seem so absurd as the western media depict. The Chinese claims to the extensive maritime zone are of course disputed by other states in the region.
This article cited below depicts the Chinese position on the so called “arbitration” by the Permanent Court of Arbitration under the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea. Please refer to the article for a more complete description of the PCA's unsound assumption of jurisdiction and decision. The Chinese never acquiesced to PCA jurisdiction and the court's reasoning on jurisdiction is defective. Consequently, the decision is void.
The bottom line is there is no PCA/ITLOS jurisdiction over Chinese sovereignty claims:
…The overall obligation to submit to a compulsory conciliation procedure under 298(1)(a)(i) will however not apply in respect of a maritime boundary dispute which “necessarily involves the concurrent consideration of any unsettled dispute concerning sovereignty or other rights over the continental shelf or insular territory”.21 In other words, obligation contained in article 298(1)(a)(i) to submit a conciliation procedure is subject to three conditions: (i) the dispute should have arisen after the Convention entered into force; (ii) no agreement could be reached between the parties settling the dispute within a reasonable period of time; and (iii) that the dispute did not involve “the concurrent consideration of any unsettled dispute concerning sovereignty or other rights over continental shelf or insular land territory”.*
*The South China Sea Arbitration (The Philippines v. China): Assessment of the Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility
Sreenivasa Rao Pemmaraju Author
Chinese Journal of International Law, Volume 15, Issue 2, June 2016, Pages 265–307, https://doi.org/10.1093/chinesejil/jmw019
Published: 20 June 2016 https://academic.oup.com/chinesejil/article/15/2/265/2548386
The PCA decision proceeds from a Philippine admission arguendo on the jurisdictional exclusion for territorial claims to a complete rejection of Chinese EEZ claims in the Spratley’s (and the Paracels by western operational extension).
“73…To this extent there is obvious contradiction or lack of consistency in the position of the Tribunal. On the one hand, it declares that it is not empowered to deal with issues of sovereignty and maritime delimitation in view of the Chinese Declaration pertaining to the disputes under the UNCLOS but, on the other hand, it declares itself competent to examine “the source of maritime entitlements of China in the South China Sea”. In that sense, the position of the Tribunal is manifestly self-contradictory.”*
*Id., https://academic.oup.com/chinesejil/article/15/2/265/2548386
Shunji Yanai, the jurist and then president of ITLOS, is “a rightwing Japanese intent on ridding Japan of post-war arrangements.” He is the Baron Kentaro Kaneko of the 21st century as James Bradley might characterize him. The Baron was Teddy Roosevelt’s colleague from Harvard who worked for Ito Hirobumi. He and Roosevelt were of one mind in carving up East Asia to their respective advantages. When the romance wore off some decades later, WWII began. WWII in Asia for the Chinese and Koreans began much earlier, before WWI.
Shunji Yanai, the ITLOS director was a former Japanese ambassador to D.C. He appointed the “arbitrators” to the PCA. He is the darling of Abe and the right wing of Japan, who want to make Japan “great again.” All the higher ups in the current US naval chain of command, the Air Force, and BG Stilwell in the State department are adherents of an irredentist Japanese view of Asia, where all historical disputes should be decided against China (including Taiwan) and Russia for that matter, and other pre-colonial claimants like South Korea. The Japanese are historical revisionists, the US is tied to their Meiji revisionist view of history and territorial claims particularly of the maritime nature in the East Asian littoral. Most Americans are unaware of how the Japanese view of history, which is contrary to the US experience of WWII, has permeated contemporary media, government, business and military circles in the US, as it is consistent with the innate imperialism of the US and Japan just as it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
US "freedom of navigation operations," are based upon little more than jingoism, covering up a seriously defective treatment of international law and history.
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