Kudos to President Obama (he’s ‘President Obama’ when he does the right thing, ‘Hope ‘n Change’ at all other times).
He’s ordered the USS Chung-Hoon to protect the USNS Impeccable as she goes about her business in the South China Sea. Chung-Hoon is an Aegis-equipped destroyer of the Burke class. His response is far better than President Bush’s wimpy reaction to the P-3 knockdown incident in 2001.
By now we know about the serious Chinese harassment of Impeccable last weekend, even extending to grappling for Impeccable’s SURTASS. And yes, Impeccable was likely doing detailed sonar mapping and surveillance of the ocean approaches to the Chinese base at Sanya on Hainan Island. The Chinese have massively improved the facility of late to accommodate its Type 094 class of ballistic missile submarines. The Sanya base is close to the deep water that any submarine needs to hide.
The Chinese have two complaints. First, they claim the entire South China Sea as part of an ‘economic exclusion zone’ and second, that Impeccable was engaged in spying.
Chinese EEZ claims are based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the U.S. has never ratified. The Convention establishes expanding zones known as “territorial seas” (12 nautical miles offshore), “contiguous zones” (24 nautical miles offshore) and EEZs (200 nautical miles offshore). The EEZ extends to the point where the continental shelf meets the deep seafloor. In the EEZ, a country has the exclusive right to manage natural resources, including oil, natural gas and fisheries.
Impeccable was 75 miles off Hainan at the time of the incident. The dispute is over the scope of the EEZ. While UNCLOS provides for freedom of navigation within the EEZ, the Chinese expansively interpret UNCLOS to prohibit ‘non-peaceful’ scientific research within the zone. And yes, that’s pretty expansive.
As to the charge of spying, so what? Chinese spy ships invade Japanese and Philippine waters on a fairly regular basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese had surveillance ships off Guam or Pearl Harbor. During the Cold War, Russian spy ships off the U.S. coast were a fact of life.
But back to President Obama. Sending Chung-Hoon to play the role of big brother to Impeccable is a good and necessary move.
