Obama-administration officials have been busy patting themselves on the back for what happened on October 27 in the South China Sea. There, the Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen passed within twelve nautical miles of Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands, without incident. China, which claims sovereignty over the reef and is building military facilities on it, claims that crossing that supposed twelve-mile limit violates its territorial waters. The destroyer, accompanied by Navy surveillance aircraft (and shadowed by People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, destroyers), was asserting the principle of freedom of navigation through international waters, proving that the U.S. will not be intimidated by China’s sovereignty claims.
The voyage of the USS Lassen is part of an intensifying war of nerves for control of the Spratly Islands, a collection of reefs, rocks, and islets that have no fewer than six governments (those of China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and the Sultanate of Brunei) claiming sovereignty over part or (in China’s case) all of them. Recent incidents that have arisen out of these tensions include Chinese ships’ water-cannoning and even ramming Vietnamese and Philippine maritime-police and fishing vessels, as well as issuing a warning to a U.S. surveillance plane in May to “go away” after the plane flew too close to the alleged twelve-mile limit.
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