The US deployed four Navy destroyers in response to Russian and Chinese vessels operating near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, which stretch far into the northern Pacific Ocean.
The incident occurred last week when 11 Chinese and Russian warships were conducting joint patrols near the Aleutian Islands. It’s not clear how close the vessels came to Alaska’s territory.
US Northern Command said the vessels stayed in international waters, which means they did not enter US territorial waters, which stretch 12 nautical miles from the US coastline.
“Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat,” Northern Command told The Wall Street Journal.
While the US insists it has the right to patrol sensitive waters near China and Russia, such as the Taiwan Strait and the Black Sea, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan (R) blasted the patrol as “another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow.”
Sullivan said he was happy that the US Navy deployed destroyers to monitor the Chinese and Russian vessels and said the response to a similar patrol that took place last year was not adequate.
“Last summer the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska. Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese/Russian naval operation occur off our coast,” Sullivan said.
For their part, China said the patrol was not directed at the US. “According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific Ocean. This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the US.
The Russian and Chinese militaries have been increasing cooperation in recent years as both nations have faced similar pressure from the US and its allies.
In recent years, the US has been encouraging allies to increase their presence in the South China Sea to challenge China’s claims to the waters. During the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and NATO were very active in the Black Sea. In June 2021, a British warship sailed about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Crimea.
The US borrows money for fuel, maintenance and crew pay. It is borrowing money to harass and attack many countries around the world. Russia and China can afford to leverage US debt to the moon with this tactic. Perhaps other countries being hounded by US militarism would like to assist China and Russia to bankrupt the US.
The other side so to speak probably has thought about this as a good idea since the US is sowing the seeds of its destruction so well.
Many countries want to join BRICS and Dilma Rousseff, former president of Brazil is now president of the New Development Bank in Shanghai. Russia and China are both depositing in that bank. Financially, the US is like a child’s floating soap bubble outside on a hot, sunny day.
I like your analogy
Russia has not been able to connect with Swift for payments, etc. So, the grain deal will be off until that is resolved, along with the sanctions. We have a habit of making deals, the breaking them, to our benefit.
Agree. We’re in stuck in the trough of the Kondratieff cycle, and plunging still deeper. A hollowed economy with a hollow currency. Soon we’ll all be billionaires.
We sailed between Taiwan and China in International waters a few weeks ago and this is the response.
To tell you the truth this is a great opportunity to observe how scribblers from different political perspectives report a event.
What details are shared to bolster a opinion and what is ignored plus word selection.
It’s amazing how one’s perspective chooses the descriptive words a professional scribbler uses and if you read several selections about this event it is interesting (at least to me;-) how different the scribbles are.
I wouldn’t call it a response. A response would be Chinese warships in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oh yeah. The propagandists always cry “MA! He touched my hair!” when Russians or Chinese do anything even remotely similar to what Pentagon does.
“Response” is just a word used by the writer to get the reader to view the event in a certain way.
We all do it when we write.
I try to ignore the writer’s word selection and focus on whatever they are reporting on myself.
Yep. Cold, logical approach is a good antidote to propaganda.
Darn near everything we read only contains a sentence or two of real data/information and the rest is opinion about that single sentence.
This stuff is not peer-reviewed scientific journal stuff after all and there has been quite a few “scandals” involving those nerds and falsification of data so no one/thing is perfect…;-).
I am just guessing that Nuclear submarines with nuclear missiles are either on the scene or close by. the threat to civilization{sic} grows bigger every day. It is probably time to reset the doomsday clock not that will make any difference.
The thing about submarines with nuclear missiles is that they don’t have to be close by. The Trident II has a range of about 4,000 miles. The Russian Bulava has a range of more than (possibly a lot more than) 5,000 miles.
And the last place they’re likely to be is in the vicinity of large naval exercises. Those subs are really hard to find, but not impossible to find (and detection capability has been improving significantly). And closer is easier.
My understanding is new infrared sensors can see water mixing when the submarines move.
I haven’t heard about that, but I know that subs have been able to “hide” from surface sonar because sound tends to be reflected by layers of water of differing temperature and salinity, and it makes sense that infrared detectors might be able to see the disturbance caused by something big moving through those boundaries. Or maybe it’s something else that my little brain can’t even imagine.
I’ve been seeing stuff like this pop up in the past few years: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9881233
Some have state of the art drives, rather than screws that can easily be picked up by sonar.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Russians can retake Alaska without any significant response from the Pentagon. They don’t want to be annihilated.
Some of the people making these life altering decisions have a death wish IMHO.
Danny must have been in front of mirror during this statement…!
Sullivan=reminder of ‘authoritarian aggression’
I’ve long since learned to ignore any statements from politicians on Russia, China, Ukraine as the statements are always stupid, hypocritical, and hysterical. This is no different and certainly hypocritical.
“Democratic” aggression is much better.
The we need to stay out of the Black Sea.
No foreign warship can enter the Black Sea at the moment. Montreux Convention.