Former NATO commander warns China’s warship confrontation could start war

Former NATO supreme commander James Stavridis has warned the near-collision between Chinese and US warships in the Taiwan Strait brought the world to within inches of conflict.

The US destroyer USS Chung-Hoon, accompanied by the Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal, on Saturday timed a “freedom of navigation” passage of the disputed waterway between mainland China and Taiwan to coincide with the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue of international leaders in Singapore at the weekend.

Beijing was not impressed.

A video published by Canadian news service Global News reveals the result. A Chinese destroyer travelling close to the formation suddenly turned to cut across the US destroyer’s path. It repeated the move a short time later.

The resulting close call brought the warships within 140m of each other.

“As a former sea captain of a similar US destroyer, it almost made my heart stop to watch this video,” Stavridis tweeted at the weekend.

“This is wildly unprofessional and provocative behaviour on the part of the Chinese Navy. Wars start with incidents like this. Shame on the PLA Navy.”

For its part, China’s Ministry of National Defence claimed the Chinese warship had behaved “lawfully and professionally”.

The incident comes just a week after a Chinese combat jet engaged in what was described as “an unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre” in front of a US reconnaissance aircraft operating over the South China Sea.

“We remain concerned about the PLA’s increasingly risky and coercive activities in the region, including in recent days,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said overnight.

General diplomacy

Peoples Liberation Army General Li Shangfu was appointed defence minister in March as part of Chairman Xi Jinping’s third-term politburo reshuffle. He’s also a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

“Why does this all happen near China’s sovereign waters and airspace? Chinese ships and aircraft never go near other countries’ airspace and waters,” General Li told the Singapore security conference.

But, even as he spoke, a Chinese survey ship – guarded by Chinese Coast Guard vessels – was operating within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). And Chinese warships have repeatedly operated in Japanese, Malaysian and Philippine waters recently.

“What’s the point of going there? For China, we always say mind your own business, take good care of your own vessels, your fighter jets, take good care of your own territorial airspace and waters. If that is the case, then I don’t think there will be future problems,” General Li said in answer to questions after giving his speech yesterday.

The problem is that Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia disagree with China’s claim to sovereign rights over 90 per cent of the South China Sea.

And the US is determined not to accept Beijing’s attempt to redefine the Taiwan Strait as an internal waterway.

“As defence minister, every day, I see a lot of information about foreign vessels and fighter jets coming into areas near our territory,” General Li said.

“They’re not here for innocent passage. They’re here for provocation.”

Trigger point

An alleged clash between North Vietnamese patrol boats and the US destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964, triggered then-US President Lyndon Johnson to send forces to Vietnam.

And a fatal collision between warships has been regularly used as the spark for war in recent think tank war-games analysing potential conflict over Taiwan.

A series of recent events have brought these fears closer to reality.

Chinese Coast Guard vessels last month forcefully imposed themselves in the path of a Philippine Coast Guard vessel approaching an outpost on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.

The incident prompted the US State Department to declare: “The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms that an armed attack in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea, on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard, would invoke US mutual defence commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defence Treaty.”

But China’s Coast Guard has also been active in waters off Japan’s Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Several vessels allegedly “chased” Japanese boats out of the area.

And the Taiwan Strait incident has been portrayed by Beijing as a “resolute” display of protecting its sovereign rights.

“China is getting reckless,” Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told Radio Free Asia.

“Beijing is just trying to force everyone to accept the idea that Taiwan Straits are somehow China’s de facto territorial waters.”

Letter of the law

General Li yesterday accused Washington of attempting “to constrain others with a convention itself has not acceded to”.

China is a signatory of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). But it has rejected as “illegal” a ruling by the international court in The Hague that Beijing has no sovereign rights over the Philippines territory in the South China Sea.

The US is not a signatory, but says it “recognises” the convention’s jurisdiction.

“What is key now is that we must prevent attempts to use freedom of navigation … as a pretext to exercise hegemony of navigation,” General Li said.

At the weekend, Peking University’s South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) released a justification for Beijing’s territorial stance.

“There has never been an unrestricted right of navigation in the Convention or in general international law,” the research paper argues.

“Although foreign ships enjoy the right of innocent passage in the territorial sea, Article 25 of the Convention provides that the coastal state may take the necessary steps to prevent passage which is not innocent.”

The university argues Beijing gets to determine what is innocent and what is not.

But China itself regularly conducts “freedom of navigation” exercises through Japanese waters. And its warships have passed through US territorial waters in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska – without complaint.

Article 19 of the UN Law of the Sea Convention states that such passage was permitted “so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state”.

“To be clear, we do not seek conflict or confrontation, but we do not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion,” said Austin in his Shangri-La Dialogue speech.

Austin repeated calls for high-level dialogue between the two nations’ defence leadership. Washington had invited Chinese defence minister General Li Shangfu to meet with Austin on the sidelines of the conference, but Beijing declined.

“The more that we talk, the more that we can avoid the misunderstandings and miscalculations that could lead to crisis or conflict,” US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said at the conference.

General Li said the same thing.

He said Beijing wanted a Global Security Initiative that featured “dialogue over confrontation, partnership over alliance and win-win over zero-sum”.

But he only consented to shake Austin’s hand in passing. Not to talk.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel