US naval maneuvers near China may provoke global war: Ex-US Senate candidate
America’s planned naval maneuvers in the South China Sea close to China’s artificial islands may provoke a war on a global basis, a former US Senate candidate and broadcaster in Texas says.
“We’re in a situation tonight where American foreign policy, especially in the last 15 years, has led to a circumstance where we are potentially on the edge of the abyss,” Mark Dankof told Press TV on Sunday.
Dankof compared the planned US naval maneuvers in the South China Sea to the deployment of US warships inside Japan’s territorial waters in 1941.
That deployment, which was ordered by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, led to naval confrontations between the US and Japan and the declaration of war on Japan by Roosevelt on December 8, 1941.
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the US plans to sail warships in the South China Sea around the disputed Spratly Islands to signal it does not recognize Beijing’s territorial claims over the disputed area.
The US ships will sail within the 12-nautical-mile (22 km) zones that China claims as territory that surrounds some of the islands it has constructed in the Spratly Island chain.
The move will likely raise tensions between the two nations amid disagreement over other issues, including cyber espionage and unfair trade practices.
China insists it has sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims.
The commander of US forces in the Pacific, Admiral Harry Harris, said Friday that the United States must “exercise freedom of navigation wherever we need to.”
However, he declined to say whether the navy planned to go within 12 nautical miles of China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Admiral Harris’s “incredibly irresponsible remarks” are designed to provoke another tragic war, Dankof said.
“This is crazy; it makes us wonder what sort of lunatics are running the American government and the national security policy that the commanding officer of American naval forces in the Pacific would actually be saying things like this publicly,” he added.
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