America's next major shooting war may not start in the Middle East, as many have predicted, or over Ukraine, as others fear. It could break out in the remote series of Pacific islands known as the Spratlys. And America's strategic retreat under President Obama may have already increased the risk of conflict.
The Spratlys are some 750 separate, uninhabited islands in the middle of the South China Sea. Most are more like rocks than islands, but their ownership has been fiercely contested over the last decade by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia. All for good reason — the Spratlys sit off sizable reserves of oil and natural gas.
In 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping staked a concrete claim to the Spratlys, which lie more than 680 miles from the Chinese coast. For the past three years Chinese construction companies have been expanding one of the westernmost Spratlys, Fiery Cross Reef, to more than four times its original size — up to 2,000 acres of land — and adding a 10,000-foot runway (long enough for fighter jets to land on) as well as airborne early-warning radar. Satellite pictures reveal similar reclamation work on nearby Subi Reef that could result in a similar-sized airstrip.
In short, China isn't just remaking the Spratlys. It's preparing to defend its claims by force.
Outraged, other countries like the Philippines and Vietnam have been urging the United States to counter China's de facto annexation and gross breach of international law. As usual, the Obama administration has instead opted to remain largely neutral, while hoping a few expressions of diplomatic concern will make the problem go away.
But with the Fiery Cross Reef runway ready to be finished by year's end (as one unnamed Navy official told Reuters), the U.S. military is planning to send aircraft and ships to counter China's moves. The littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth sailed out to the Spratlys this month, along with a reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle and Seahawk helicopter to reconnoiter China's activities.
The aim of this mission is unclear, unless it is to sail within 12 nautical miles of the built-up islands in order to demonstrate that China's claims to sovereignty are bogus. But what China will do if that happens is also unclear.
"Do you think we would support that move?" a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman angrily asked recently. China considers it claims to the Spratlys (or Nansha Islands, as Beijing calls them) inviolable; the question is whether they will use force to assert those claims against a U.S. intruder — and what we would have to do in response.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that the coming showdown over the Spratlys is a result of a U.S. policy toward China that's out of sync with reality — just as it has been over Putin's invasion of Ukraine and Iran's nuclear program. The more aggressive China has been in bullying its neighbors and growing its military into a regional menace, the more passive Washington has been in developing a strategy to contain China's ambitions.
Indeed, the president himself has been more focused on getting a pointless climate change treaty out of Beijing than standing by allies like the Philippines and Japan, which faces similar Chinese provocations in the East China Sea.
But even this administration can't afford to let those runways become the means by which China can close air and sea space around the Spratlys. That would allow Beijing to reinforce its claims of sovereignty over almost 90 percent of the South China Sea — through which $5 trillion of commerce passes every year — and impose limits on freedom of navigation that the U.S. is committed to protecting in the region.
Wars sometimes begin when feckless powers suddenly decide to look tough and are called on their bluff. Are we on the brink of something like that in the Spratlys? Probably not. But the scenario of U.S. and Chinese missile-armed warships circling each other and jet fighters buzzing overhead is not encouraging, and certainly not the kind of "pivot to the Pacific" that Obama promised.