Last week, the US Navy sailed the guided-missile destroyer USS John McCain near the Con Dao Islands in the South China Sea to challenge Vietnam’s claims to the waters.
The Con Dao Islands is an archipelago of 16 largely uninhabited islands that are about 60 miles off of Vietnam’s coast. The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet issued a statement on the operation the day it was carried out, on December 24th.
“The ship conducted normal operations within Vietnam’s claimed territorial seas to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access and navigational freedoms consistent with international law,” the statement said.
The US frequently sails warships into the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s claims, in maneuvers dubbed Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs). A FONOP aimed solely at Vietnam is a break from normal US operations in the region.
Earlier last week, the USS McCain sailed near the Chinese-claimed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. While the maneuver near the Spratlys was clearly meant to challenge China’s territorial claims, the US said it was also done to challenge “restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China, Vietnam, and Taiwan.”
China, Vietnam, and several other southeast Asian countries have overlapping claims to the South China Sea. The US inserted itself into the dispute, and in July, the Trump administration formally rejected most of China’s claims to the waters. The rejection came along with an uptick in US military activity in the region.
biden upset Harris confiscated his rubber duck in bathtub and threatened to defund life alert system in White House basement where he will reside
Except Cry Baby Trump is still in the Bathtub playing Rubber Ducky with Stormy Daniels! Beware of the Mann Act!
In the South China Sea Vietnam claims three times as many islands as China does. And none if them are in violation of any international law. In fact the US can’t get its story straight, first claiming that various countries aren’t the legal claimants, and then claiming that the claimants have no right to prevent innocent passage in foreign territorial waters. In that latter case the US is wrong again.
UNCLOS — Article 19 — Meaning of innocent passage
1.” Passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State.”
The US is wrong again claiming it is enforcing UNCLOS (it isn’t) considering that the US Senate refused to ratify UNCLOS. The senators didn’t want to be told what to do under any international treaty, which is why the US regularly shucks treaties.
Finally, the silly US Navy haven’t accomplished a thing in their five or six years of public relations announcements that yet again they have accomplished freedom of navigation when in fact the hundreds of ships traversing the South China Sea every day have not been hindered from sailing to or from their ports, mostly Chinese. Here’s a current display of marine traffic in the area.
This is the “rules-based world” of Pompeo, where he does not accept the rules.
Look at a map and do you you see the usa nearby? FONOP to the us means the bullys right to walk anywhere in the neighborhood with a loaded gun,chest out high, nose in the air, …etc.
US wants another humiliating defeat from Vietnam on the stupid confrontation….!
Yet the United States of America can make claim to the very sea itself and even the Sovereign Territory of another country itself. Or have you forgotten about how a US Ship shot down an Iranian Civilian Airliner which was flying on a recognized civil flight path over Iran itself, not the sea, and was shot out of the sky, for having the Temerity of potentially flying over a US War Ship, Right of Navigation MY Ass, it is nothing more than Gunboat Diplomacy, Imagine the Republicans in the US Senate screeching at the top of their lungs if a couple of Russian Submarines surfaced 12 miles of the Entrance to New York Harbor and sailed 12 miles down the Eastern Coast of United States of America. There would be NO RIGHT OF NAVIGATION THERE would there.