The US Navy and Marines Corps are conducting drills in the South China Sea amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over the Chinese balloon incident.
The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet said in a statement that the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group conducted the drills on February 11 with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Seventh Fleet did not say when the drills started or when they would end.
The US has stepped up its military activity in the South China Sea in recent years and has formally rejected most of Beijing’s claims to the waters. China, the Philippines, and several other Southeast Asian nations all have overlapping claims to the South China Sea.
The US has involved itself in the dispute, and starting under the Obama administration, the US began sailing warships near Chinese-controlled islands in the South China Sea. The Biden administration is looking to expand the US presence in the region and recently signed a deal with the Philippines that will give the US access to four more military sites in the country.
The current exercises come after China declined a call from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin following the US downing of the Chinese balloon. Washington claimed the balloon was a spy device, while Beijing insisted it was a weather balloon only used for civilian purposes.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned trip to China when the balloon was first announced by the Pentagon. Since the incident, the US military has shot down two unidentified objects, but the White House says they didn’t look like Chinese balloons.
US hypocrisy is supreme – first they complain about a weather balloon entering US territory and shoot it down with a $400 K missile on to the next provocation by taking their nuclear capable warships through if not very close the territorial waters that are claimed by China and call this event innocent right of passage as granted under the law of the sea which they’ve never bothered to ratify.
If China is so bad and aggressive and the US is so serious about stopping them, let the economic war start now. The vast stream of container ships full of everything Americans use and want will disappear when the first shot is fired anyway. Prison and sweatshop labor also made most of it, if we care at all about freedom.
I recommend the ones with the adjustable chucks.
Much more fun to play “Shoot The Balloon” than shoot at those who shoot back, especially when they have “bullets” 4000 times the blast of the two that ended WWII….
Until now satellites have been free to wander the the earth’s skies but that, I suspect, is on the cusp of changing as NORAD takes aim due to ballooning political pressure and ultimately cause other nations to do the same, meaning no satellite of any kind will be safe from missile attack even if the debris halts future space explorations. Peace.
I too can put on a dog and pony show. But you don’t have to sail to South China Sea for that.