Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India, to say nothing of the developing democracies of Southeast Asia, will not easily countenance Chinese “intimidation and coercion”
U.S. Navy must modernize quickly to blunt Chinese’s aggressive posture!
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Addressing the “Shangri-la Dialogue,” the most important annual conference on security in East Asia, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis described China’s increasingly aggressive military posture in the South China Sea as a strategy “of intimidation and coercion.”
Aiming to cow the nations that rim the sea—from the Taiwan Strait to the Malacca Strait, encompassing the world’s busiest commercial waterways—into recognizing Chinese sovereignty across the region, Beijing has, over the last decade, created and militarized a string of “islands.”