Raymond Powell
Over the past two years, an increasingly confident and belligerent China has thrust its South China Sea aggression into overdrive, fixating on the Philippines as its primary target. Manila now faces what amounts to a large-scale maritime occupation of its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone by a hostile imperial power.
China has repeatedly swarmed, blocked, and rammed Philippine ships while also deploying nonlethal but dangerous weapons such as lasers, water cannons, and long-range acoustic devices in a brazen attempt to stamp out Manila’s spirited resistance.
While China has become more obviously belligerent over the past two years, the roots of its ambition date back more than a century. Chinese maritime capabilities have improved to the point that pushing the U.S. out of the strategically important “first island chain”—the strategic line of islands stretching from the Japanese archipelago through Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo, serving as a natural barrier between the East Asian mainland and the Pacific Ocean—is no longer just the fever dream of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) blowhards, but an ominously plausible outcome.
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