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Thread: LOST In The South China Sea

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    Default LOST In The South China Sea

    The Chinese government’s expansive claims to own most of the South China Sea are illegal under international law, the Trump administration said Monday as it ramped up U.S. efforts to undermine Beijing’s increasingly militarized activities in the strategic waterway.

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington is committed to standing beside allies across Asia to counter China, which has triggered regional tensions for more than a decade with assertions of sovereignty over most of the resource-rich South China Sea.

    “We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them,” Mr. Pompeo said in a statement referencing the body of water through which some $5 trillion in global trade also passes annually.

    Trump administration rejects nearly all of Beijing's claims in South China Sea

    “The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” he said. “America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources, consistent with their rights and obligations under international law.”

    China’s activities have included developing some 3,200 acres of disputed islands and then deploying advanced military weapons on them, including anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. The South China Sea contains vast commercial fishing resources and harbors large reserves of undersea oil and natural gas.

    The Chinese Embassy issued a statement saying Mr. Pompeo’s statement distorted the facts and international law.

    “The accusation is completely unjustified,” according to an embassy spokesman. “The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it.”

    Previous U.S. administrations have expressed Washington’s commitment to neutrality in all South China Sea maritime disputes involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Taiwan.

    The Trump administration has issued its declaration as tensions remain high in the region. Two Navy aircraft carrier battle groups conducted round-the-clock air operations in the South China Sea in a show of strength and support for allies last week.

    It is also a moment of tit-for-tat between Washington and Beijing on a range of fronts.

    China announced Monday that it is imposing sanctions on three U.S. lawmakers and one ambassador in retaliation for similar action by the United States last week against Chinese officials linked to human rights abuses against Muslims in western China.

    International law [NON-EXISTENT]

    U.S. officials said Monday that the Trump administration’s policy toward the South China Sea is to preserve peace and stability, uphold freedom of transit and oppose any attempt by China to use coercion or force to settle disputes over the waterway.

    “These shared interests have come under unprecedented threat from the People’s Republic of Chin,” Mr. Pompeo said.

    “Today we are strengthening U.S. policy in a vital, contentious part of that region,” the secretary of state said, adding that the United States will “reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea or the wider region.”

    “Beijing uses intimidation to undermine the sovereign rights of Southeast Asian coastal states in the South China Sea, bully them out of offshore resources, assert unilateral dominion, and replace international law with ‘might makes right,’” Mr. Pompeo said.

    According to the State Department, China has no legal grounds to unilaterally impose its control over the region. “Beijing has offered no coherent legal basis for its ‘Nine-Dashed Line’ claim in the South China Sea since formally announcing it in 2009,” said Mr. Pompeo.

    The latest policy was issued four years after the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China’s claims to control 90% of the South China Sea through a vague, historically claimed nine-dashed line.

    The 2016 international court ruling sided with the Philippine government against Beijing that determined China had no historical claims to control maritime territory under the nine-dash line.

    Mr. Pompeo’s statement Monday asserted that the ruling is “final and legally binding on both parties.”

    “Today we are aligning the U.S. position on the PRC’s maritime claims in the [South China Sea] with the tribunal’s decision,” he said.

    Giving legitimacy to U.N. courts of any kind plays into the hands of the New World Order crowd.

    Such alignment means the Trump administration is committed to the view that China cannot lawfully assert a maritime sovereignty claim and accompanying exclusive economic zone over Scarborough Reef and the Spratly Islands, because the tribunal found them to be within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.

    Trump’s harder posture

    China seized a grounded Philippines warship at Mischief Reef in the Spratly in 2012, and the Obama administration took no action to defend a defense ally.

    The Trump administration has taken a notably more aggressive posture. Mr. Pompeo announced in February 2019 that the United States considers the Spratlys covered by the 1951 U.S.-Philippines defense treaty.

    The secretary of state’s statement Monday said “Beijing’s harassment of Philippine fisheries and offshore energy development within those areas is unlawful, as are any unilateral PRC actions to exploit those resources.”

    Additionally in line with the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, the United States publicly declared Monday that China has no lawful territorial or maritime claim to Mischief Reef or Second Thomas Shoal because both fall under Philippine sovereign rights and jurisdiction.

    Based on the rejection of China’s claims at the Hague tribunal, Mr. Pompeo’s statement made clear that the U.S. also disputes any Chinese claim to waters beyond a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea from islands it is claiming in the Spratlys.

    “As such, the United States rejects any PRC maritime claim in the waters surrounding Vanguard Bank (off Vietnam), Luconia Shoals (off Malaysia), waters in Brunei’s EEZ, and Natuna Besar (off Indonesia),” the statement said. “Any PRC action to harass other states’ fishing or hydrocarbon development in these waters — or to carry out such activities unilaterally — is unlawful.”

    It also asserted that the U.S. position is that China has no lawful claims to the James Shoal, a submerged feature 50 miles from Malaysia and 1,000 nautical miles from China’s coast.

    Chinese state media has referred to the shoal as China’s southernmost territory.

    “International law is clear: An underwater feature like James Shoal cannot be claimed by any state and is incapable of generating maritime zones,” Mr. Pompeo’s statement said. It added that the underwater feature “is not and never was PRC territory, nor can Beijing assert any lawful maritime rights from it.”

    The secretary of state noted that then-Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a regional forum of Southeast Asian nations in 2010 that “’China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact.’”

    “The PRC’s predatory world view has no place in the 21st century,” Mr. Pompeo said.

    John Tkacik, a former State Department official, said the U.S. policy outlined Monday was likely triggered by intelligence indicating Chinese forces intend to partake in fresh aggression in the South China Sea.

    The policy signals that the United States “positively and unequivocally rejects China’s unilateral and illegal seizures of other peoples’ property,” Mr. Tkacik said.

    “For too long, China has demanded all nations accept that whatever territory, or seas, or airspace Beijing claims, no matter how far-fetched or ungrounded in fact, is part of the patrimony of ‘one China‘ and thereby inviolate,” he added. “This new State Department announcement changes all that.”

    Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell said the new policy is dramatic shift from the past and “clear and unambiguous” American support to the Indo-Pacific region.

    “This announcement is a victory for those who have long called for pushing back on the Chinese Communist Party’s expansionist program in the South China Sea,” Capt. Fanell said. “For a decade, the PRC used the nine-dash line as a cudgel to bully and cajole Southeast Asian nations into acquiescing to Beijing’s demands that other nations must acknowledge the PRC’s sovereignty over the South China Sea.”

    Trump administration rejects nearly all of Beijing's claims in South China Sea
    By Bill Gertz
    Monday, July 13, 2020

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...china-sea-cla/

    If you want to defend the United Nations begin with UNRATIFIED U.N. Treaties. United Nations Treaties are held in a United Nations vault until Democrats are certain they can be ratified.


    The worst of it is that signed, but unratified, United Nations treaties have a shelf life longer than the half-life of radiation from a detonated nuclear bomb. A U.N. treaty’s shelf life is so long I once suggested that American presidents should be required to at least make an effort to ratify treaties signed in their administration. Congress should pass a law stating that whenever a president fails to get one of his treaties ratified before leaving office, or two years after leaving, that treaty is automatically rejected for all time.

    https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...73#post2757973

    Remember when they tried and failed to ratify The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) way back when then-Senator Joe Biden, and retired RINO Senator Richard Lugar were pushing for ratifying the LOST. Suffice to say that not one United Nations Treaty is good for the American people. The Senate refusing to ratify the LOST was a gift to the American people.


    There is never a good time to deny the United States Navy maximum capability to defend American interests, but now is a particularly bad time. Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons and China’s continuing escalation of its military buildup will have significant implications for key trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz (through which 20% of all globally traded oil passes) and the South China Sea (through which 50% of goods transported between continents by ship passes). We will need our Navy to deter or challenge Iran and China if necessary, to keep those waterways stable and thereby fend off further damage to the global economy. With the Navy already taking a serious hit to its abilities thanks to the Obama administration’s FY 2013 defense budget proposal, the last thing we need is a mechanism that compounds the damage to that force’s effectiveness. But that is what we would be getting with ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (aka Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST), a topic that 66 Members of the House of Representatives, led by Rep. Jeff Flake (Arizona-6th District) and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio-4th District), recently sought to address.

    The Navy has long favored U.S. ratification of LOST, arguing primarily that accession to LOST would enhance the Navy’s navigational rights and freedoms, and most recently as argued by Admiral Samuel Locklear, President Obama’s nominee to lead the U.S. Pacific Command, that joining LOST would strengthen America’s “credibility” in solving maritime disputes and promoting rule of law on the world’s oceans. Both these assertions are questionable given the harsh realities of how LOST is likely to work in practice and how adversary nations — whether parties to the treaty or not — are likely to go about advancing their own strategic ambitions, irrespective of what LOST may have to say about it.

    LOST creates major opportunities for other nations to interfere with the Navy’s mobility through the use of mandatory dispute resolution mechanisms — the options here, according to Article 287 of the treaty, include the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, an arbitration panel, or a special arbitration panel. Countries with political or strategic agendas against the United States would have substantial incentive to haul the U.S. before one of these bodies, even if the chances of actually winning the dispute were slim. Politically, any number of countries would be more than happy to score propaganda points using the imagery of confronting the U.S. before a “judicial” body of any kind; strategically, as part of the dispute resolution process, the U.S. could find itself having to turn over sensitive information that could benefit the accusing nation, even if the latter ultimately loses the dispute at hand.

    XXXXX

    Adm. Locklear’s recent testimony that American membership in LOST will help promote oceanic rule-of-law, and that our non-membership lessens our credibility to help solve maritime disputes, necessarily begs the question of whose behavior we will be affecting with our enhanced credibility on such matters should we accede to LOST. It is difficult to believe that China and Iran, currently posing highly consequential maritime challenges through their military posturing in critical trade zones, will be moved by the United States becoming a party to the treaty. China has already demonstrated repeatedly its willingness to manipulate LOST’s lofty yet ambiguous text to justify outlandish claims to the entire South China Sea — claims that, as some analysts have pointed out, the United States could wind up inadvertently legitimating through its own accession to the treaty.


    LOST Trade Routes
    By Ben Lerner on 3.5.12 @ 6:07AM
    Should the U.S. Navy be on patrol for the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty?

    https://spectator.org/35957_lost-trade-routes/

    Bill Gertz did cite the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Here is the full text:

    https://www.un.org/depts/los/convent...s/unclos_e.pdf

    Let me throw Trump a well-deserved attaboy by reminding everyone that “Trump’s harder posture” is very much tied to rejecting the LOST:

    Filthy United Nations scum are not waiting for the right number of Senators to ratify the LOST before they try again. Two years ago they pulled a Pearl Harbor sneak attack and tried to ratify:





    When Congress approves the USMCA agreement, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) will also be ratified through the back-door

    Under LOST, any kind of maritime dispute, fisheries, environmental protection, navigation, and research must be resolved under this treaty through mandatory dispute resolution by the U.N. court or tribunal which limits autonomy. But disputes should be resolved by U.S. courts.

    When Congress approves the USMCA agreement, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) will also be ratified through the back-door, by including it in the USMCA. Which senator is going the read this massive bill?

    “After less than two years of negotiations, the USMCA was released early on October 1, 2018 on the USTR website for the public to read. It runs for 1,809 pages — 1,572 pages for the treaty chapters, 214 pages for additional annexes, and 23 pages of side letters.” (What’s Wrong With the USMCA)

    Senators like Orrin Hatch (R-UT) are eager to pass USMCA trade agreement. But we must inform our senators that any future “free trade” agreements must be discussed transparently. Those running for office should be forced to go on record whether they will support USMCA or oppose it. We must not pass this massive USMCA trade agreement in order to find out what’s in it as Nancy Pelosi famously said about the not so Affordable Care Act. There is more than just “free trade” in this huge USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada) document.


    One can only pray that a Republican Senate ratifying judges are equally committed to doing a lot of work on that part of the U.S. – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA) that includes the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty.

    President Reagan rejected the treaty in 1982 because it demanded technology and wealth transfer from developed countries to developing nations


    Note that Communist China’s claims on the South China Sea are relying heavily on the Law of the Sea Treaty even though it was never ratified. The spirit is willing, if not the flesh of the unratified Law of the Sea Treaty. The LOST is always uppermost in the minds of Chicoms and United Nations planners. I am pretty sure Secretary of State Pompeo’s negotiations considered the dangers hidden in the LOST:

    Under LOST, “intelligence and submarine maneuvers in territorial waters would be restricted and regulated”


    USMCA Sneaking UN Law of the Sea Treaty Through The Back Door?
    By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh
    November 15, 2018

    https://canadafreepress.com/article/...-the-back-door
    The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Eric Hoffer

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    China might not be too furious, yet, with Britain revoking Huawei's access to its 5G network. But when it comes to Britain's looming aircraft carrier deployment to the South China Sea, well, that's another matter.

    Why China is furious (and wrong) about upcoming Royal Navy deployment
    by Tom Rogan
    July 16, 2020 06:28 AM

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...avy-deployment

    Chicoms better believe that f–king with the Royal Navy is another matter. Chicoms will do well to remember that regardless of what Nazi Germany did the Royal Navy was going to win:


    ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE BEFORE THE BATTLE


    https://i.redd.it/q1jit1pwd8s31.jpg

    Battle of the River Plate

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_River_Plate


    ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE AFTER THE BATTLE

    https://www.historyhit.com/wp-conten...py-700x390.jpg

    Throw in the U.S. Navy along with the navies of our allies, and the Chicoms are beaten before they start. Hell, Russia might place a wager on a sure thing and add its Navy to the U.S. armada.

    Finally, I do not want to make the mistake of underestimating the enemy, but aside from China’s warships its armada consists of:


    AND

    The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Eric Hoffer

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