Since the new US President took office, there has been one request by US military to sail a warship close to artificial islands China has built in the contested waters and it was turned down by the Pentagon, a senior defense official told CNN Wednesday.
Since Trump took office, the sole request by US military to sail a warship close to artificial islands China has built in the contested waters has been turned down by the Pentagon, a senior defense official told CNN Wednesday.
Freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea were regularly authorized by the Obama administration, with US Navy vessels sailing within 12 nautical miles of China’s artificial islands at least three times in the past year-and-a-half .
The official said the denial — first reported by the New York Times — was partly due to an effort inside the Pentagon to turn down the temperature of operations that could be viewed as antagonizing China or North Korea.
Analysts say it’s the latest in a series of efforts by President Trump to appease China, whose help he wants in restraining North Korea’s nuclear ambitions .
China has described the operations as a serious breach of law and an intentional provocation.
Trump backs down on China
The last publicly announced freedom of navigation operation was in October 2016, four months before Trump took power.
Prior to his inauguration, Trump’s point man on foreign policy promised stern action in the South China Sea against China’s island building and militarization.
At his confirmation hearing, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Trump administration might take a more aggressive approach to the South China Sea.
“Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia’s taking of Crimea. It’s taking of territory that others lay claim to, ” Tillerson said in January.
He even hinted that Chinese access to the artificial islands could be restricted by US vessels.
But as relations between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have improved, with the US prioritizing tensions in the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea has fallen out of the spotlight.
