China threatening to destabilize East Asia, other regions
Jim Webb has had a continuous involvement in Asian and Pacific affairs that long predates his time in the Senate. In addition to his more recent visits as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Webb has worked and traveled throughout this vast region, from Micronesia to Burma, for nearly four decades, as a Marine Corps officer, a defense planner, a journalist, a novelist, a Department of Defense executive, and as a business consultant.
Senator Jim Webb has long maintained that our country’s greatest strategic challenge is not in the Middle East but in how to manage our relationship with the autocratic government of China, which has steadily increased its military aggression as it has expanded its economic power.
Dangerously, China’s unelected, repressive government continues to prove Senator Webb correct, threatening to destabilize East Asia and other regions.
Senator Webb warned three years ago (you can read his full article in the Wall Street Journal at http://bit.ly/1Mo9rkh) of China’s land-grab — and militarization — of more than 2 million square kilometers claimed by other countries in the South China Sea.
Just in the past few days we are seeing evidence of how dangerous China’s actions really are. Ignoring well-recognized national maritime boundaries, Chinese jet fighters took off from a recently built airstrip in the Parcel archipelago — an island long claimed by Vietnam and militarized in the past few years — in order to reinforce its claims over the Spratly Islands, where China has used land fills to build military structures on land claimed by the Philippines and other countries. Thus, China has used military bases on one island that it has taken by military force in order to reinforce its claim to military bases recently built on another island it has taken by military force.
These actions should cause all Americans great concern. They remind us of other points in history where expansionist nations have taken land that is not theirs by military force, and dared peace-loving neighbors to either accept their dominance or suffer the consequences.
Our government should have taken strong action on this issue years ago. If we do not have the courage to to so now, we may pay a much heavier price down the road.
"Our greatest long-term strategic challenge is our relations with China." - Presidential Candidate Jim Webb
No comments:
Post a Comment