However it appears that cooler heads prevailed — beginning with US President Barack Obama.
He “stressed the importance of raising the level and frequency of the US-China military to military dialogue in order to avoid future incidents.”
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he did not think China was trying to prevent the US Navy from operating in the South China Sea, and he did not see a need for armed escorts.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters after her meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎): “We both agreed that we should work to ensure that such incidents do not happen again.”
Meanwhile, China announced that “top commanders do not have plans to increase the military presence in the South China Sea.”
Some interpreted the aftermath of the incident as a backdown by China but this conclusion may be premature. The plain fact is that now is not the time for either party to expand this incident. The US and China are deeply interdependent in trade and financial flow and need to work together to mitigate the current economic crisis.
There may be room for a tacit compromise. Perhaps the Obama administration would be willing to modify some of its procedures — particularly regarding the more aggressive tracking and targeting of China’s submarines. China might in turn allow some collection of hydrographic information by US naval vessels in its Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). The latter could actually be in China’s interest because as it expands its capabilities it will increasingly need to collect similar information in other countries’ EEZs, particularly Japan’s. Indeed it already does so.
Perhaps an agreement on incidents at sea could mitigate actual confrontations. But even if such an accord were reachable, it would not address the fundamental US-China relations issue of Taiwan.
Mark Valencia is a visiting senior fellow at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia.
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