China’s claims over huge swaths of the South China Sea are illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
So ruled the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands. [1]
China is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and thus is legally obligated under that treaty to abide by decisions of the Court. [Fat chance.]
In reaction to the Court's ruling, China's government and media (which is part of the government) have gone into paroxysms of denunciation and hysterical vows to ignore the ruling. Even before the official ruling, Chinese propagandists were issuing crazed rants, for example a front-page editorial spewed out the day before the Court issued its decision, by the so-called People’s Daily, blaring a conspiracy theory line that the case was a US and Philippine plot against China, a sneaky trap set by the US and the Philippines with the Court acting as an accomplice.
[I might interject here that, contrary to my somewhat misleading title, China isn't just now becoming an outlaw nation. Its invasion and absorption of Tibet was a criminal act also. And it has long been guilty of numerous, severe abuses of human rights. Oh, and it invaded Vietnam in 1979, an act of unprovoked aggression. (Actually the "provocation" was that Vietnam had the temerity to overthrow the mass murdering Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The U.S. was also mad at Vietnam for doing that.)]
China did not defend itself in the Court, obviously because it knew it didn't have a leg to stand on legally or factually, and it had already determined in advance that it would ignore the Court's decision. China claims, absurdly, that most nations support its illegal position on the series of disputes in the South China Sea.
The other nations whose feet China has been stomping on regarding their territorial claims and rights of free navigation and fishing, are Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Taiwan (which China insists is a mere "province" of China), and Vietnam, that last one a country China has repeatedly invaded over the centuries, including in 1979 with the connivance of the Carter regime of the U.S. [2]
China is a lovely neighbor, eh?
Only the Philippines had the guts to bring suit (so far) against China. It filed the case last year.
China is trying to grab undersea oil and gas, as well as hog the fish in the area. It has been caught illegally fishing in the territorial waters of other nations in the region. In return, its navy chases the fishing boats of other countries out of international waters, which it illegally claims as Chinese territorial waters.
Part of China's scheme has been creating artificial islands, reinforced with military runways and bases, around which it then claims territorial waters. The Court rejected this tawdry scam in its ruling. [3]
But the Court, lacking a navy, has no enforcement powers over China, It can't even freeze Chinese assets or bar China from the international financial system -only the U.S. has those powers.
There is a superceding law over all the formal laws and treaties in "international relations." It's an unwritten law; The Law of the Jungle. The principle of that "law" is, Might Makes Right.
In other words, as long as you can get away with it, it's "legal." Because you just declare it so.
Put another way, the powerful decide what the rules are, regardless of what's written down on some piece of paper they solemnly signed and ratified (aka a "treaty").
Such as when the regime of Bush the Younger declared U.S. torture wasn't torture, merely "enhanced interrogation techniques," a smarmy, slimy euphemism persisted in to this day by the U.S. corporate propaganda system, known by the opaque and evasive term, "the media."
And invading Iraq on a trump-up, transparently fraudulent pretext wasn't criminal aggression. (But the U.S. has been invading places since 1812. It's a tradition, you see.)
Speaking of the U.S, so far the U.S. response to China's contemptuous spitting on its international obligations under the treaty it signed, has been quite muted. Nothing from Obama, or even John "Skull and Bones" Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State. Just an anodyne, milquetoast burp from State Department chief mouthpiece John Kirby, saying, while not being able to comment yet on the merits of the case, the U.S. supports the rule of law and peaceful efforts to resolve maritime disputes. (The merits were already decided, Kirby, by the body empowered to decide them! And the Court vote was 5-0. Sounds pretty definitive to me.)
Highlights of the absurd, evasive, head-ducking press release from State Department Chief Flack Kirby:
"The United States strongly supports the rule of law. " [Actually it only supports it when it's in the U.S. "interest." Otherwise fuck the law. See for example invasion of Iraq, torture, subversion and overthrow of "hostile" government, assassinations, gross human rights violations domestically and abroad, etc. In fact, the U.S. doesn't even respect its own domestic laws or Constitution. Its police are virtually above the law, for example. Its police and secret police routinely violate the "guaranteed" rights of the Constitution, and always have. Officials break numerous laws all the time with impunity. If a big enough scandal erupts from lawbreaking, such as Reagan's criminal Iran-contragate conspiracy, a price is paid- namely "embarrassment." Man, if "embarrassment" were the only penalty for crimes, I'd be a bank robber! (Not really. Unlike the people in power here, some of us have a moral compass.)]
More from Kirby:
“In the aftermath of this important decision, we urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions,” he said, splitting the non-existent difference. Now you all behave yourselves.
"We are still studying the decision and have no comment on the merits of the case... As provided in the Convention, the Tribunal’s decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines. The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations." [My emphases. So even-handed! The ruling went almost totally against China. And why does the U.S. "have no comment on the merits of the case"? The merits have been decided, you just effectively admitted, Kirby.]
In fact, much of the statement is written as if the Court decided nothing. It urges the parties to "clarify" their claims and "work together to manage and resolve their disputes." Well they tried that already, that's why the Philippines went to Court! China is openly defying the ruling of the Court, despite the fact that they signed a treaty agreeing to accept dispute resolution through the Court. Now what's the U.S. gonna do about it? [4]
It has alliances, official and unofficial, with most of the countries on that list that China is pushing around. China has declared, quite furiously, that it intends to push ahead with its absorption of the various islands, reefs, rocks, and vast ocean area it claims as its property. The other nations cannot successfully confront China's military unless the U.S. military backs them up.
Best case scenario is that Obama steps up to the plate, and China backs down in a confrontation. But what happens in a decade or two, when China's military is stronger, maybe much stronger?
But there's no reason to assume Obama will even risk a confrontation at present. His punking out when Assad, the Butcher of Syria, crossed Obama's "red line" over using chemical weapons, does not inspired confidence. Obama is good at attacking the weak. Confronting even the somewhat strong is too risky for his taste. Backing down from China will be a green light for increasing Chinese aggressiveness.
THEY'VE THROWN DOWN THE GAUNTLET TO THE U.S. SO FAR THE U.S. IS PRETENDING NOT TO NOTICE.
1] The Court issued a press release and the judgment, which they call an "Award," as English .pdfs, July 12. Click on the indicated links for those. The judgment is 501 pages, by the way.
2] I remember well how the Chinese dictator at the time in 1979, Deng Xiaoping, came to the U.S. to be officially feted by president "Jimmy" Carter, and immediately after Deng left, China invaded Vietnam. Being a "cynic," that is, someone who isn't brainwashed by the crap in this country, I thought at the time that there was probably some connivance between the U.S. and China, given the timing, and the grudge the U.S. held against Vietnam for not surrendering after the U.S. killed at least 3 million Vietnamese, dropped 6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam (three times the tonnage the U.S. dropped in World War II), permanently poisoned the land with defoliants contaminated with carcincogenic, neurotoxic, and DNA-damaging dioxins, and the commisions of numerous war crimes and atrocities. Carter said the U.S. didn't owe Vietnam any apology (much less reparations) because "the destruction was mutual." (Yeah, the U.S. bombed Vietnam, and Vietnam shot down some of the bombers. So it's even.)
The Carter regime of course lied through their teeth and denied they'd had the slightest inkling of the impending invasion. (And this with the massive U.S. global surveillance system. Even if the Chinese couldn't resist sharing their plan with the U.S. so they could mutually gloat in advance, U.S. communications intercepts and satellite and airplane surveillance couldn't possibly have missed the military build-up on Vietnam's borders and the preparations for invading.) As it turned out, the Vietnamese beat back the Chinese invaders.
Some years later, the sinister Count Dracula lookalike, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Russian-hating Pole who was Carter's eminence grise as head of the "National Security Council," couldn't resist boasting about how Deng had told the American rulers of the impending invasion. The Carter regime imperialists couldn't have been happier.
Brzezinski, by the way, successfully plotted to lure the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan, another crime he unwisely boasted about. [See Brzezinski in his own words, from Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, although I can't vouch for the English translation. Also "THE STRATEGIC MIND OF ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: HOW A NATIVE POLE USED AFGHANISTAN TO PROTECT HIS HOMELAND," whose author interviewed Brzezinski, former CIA Director Robert Gates, who oversaw an operation to arm violent Afghan religious fanatics, the so-called Muhajideen, "Holy Warriors," starting six months before the Soviet invasion, high government apparatchiks Walter Slocombe, David Aaron, Dennis Ross, Leslie Gelb, leading Democratic Party operative Bob Shrum, Jim Mowrer, and journalist Hedrick Smith.
There are brief summaries of Brzezinski's anti-Soviet plot, which eventually culminated in the Afghanistan we have today, at "Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Now Orlando’s Nightmare," Huffington Post, June 10, 2016.
Here's Brzezinski's flippant dismissal of the immense "blowback" the U.S. and much of the rest of the world has suffered from the policy he sold to his stupid boss, president Carter:
“What was more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold war?”
("Afghanistan: The Soviet Union's Vietnam," Aljazeera, April 23, 2003.)
Carter was and has often been sold to the U.S. public as a "peanut farmer," but more pertinently he was a career naval officer who served on atomic missile submarines. He was steeped and marinated in the culture of U.S. imperialism and anti-Soviet ideology. He increased the military budget by 50% during his single four-year term in office, a fact that is never mentioned in the U.S.
Carter also initiated the contra terrorist war against Nicaragua. And before that, to get around Congress, he secretly had Israel supply arms to the dying regime of the evil dictator Somoza. On top of that, Carter declared that the Shah of Iran, rated as the worst dictator in the world by Amnesty International when he was in power, as a "good friend." As with Somoza, he tried to save him (and was considered a weakling by U.S. fascists when that proved impossible).
Jimmy Carter, getting to live to a ripe old age in his 90s, unlike so many of his victims, has reinvented himself (with U.S. media help) as some kind of Great Humanitarian. Yeah, right.
By the way, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few thousand eggs! (The "omelet" being the continual rule of bastards in power.)
3] See for example, "China has reclaimed 3,200 acres in South China Sea, Pentagon says," PBS NewsHour, May 13, 2016. PBS is the Public Broadcasting Service, set up by the U.S. government and funded in part by large corporations and a slew of major haute bourgeois foundations, plus U.S. government money and viewer donations.
4] I've reprinted the entire State Department press release here, so you don't have to have your ip address snatched up by the U.S. government and spyware planted on your computer. But if you insist on verifying the accuracy of it, click on the title below:
Decision in the Philippines-China Arbitration
Press Statement
John Kirby
Assistant Secretary and Department Spokesperson, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
July 12, 2016
The decision today by the Tribunal in the Philippines-China arbitration is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea. We are still studying the decision and have no comment on the merits of the case, but some important principles have been clear from the beginning of this case and are worth restating.
The United States strongly supports the rule of law. We support efforts to resolve territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, including through arbitration.
When joining the Law of the Sea Convention, parties agree to the Convention’s compulsory dispute settlement process to resolve disputes. In today’s decision and in its decision from October of last year, the Tribunal unanimously found that the Philippines was acting within its rights under the Convention in initiating this arbitration.
As provided in the Convention, the Tribunal’s decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines. The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations.
In the aftermath of this important decision, we urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions. This decision can and should serve as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime disputes peacefully.
We encourage claimants to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with international law -- as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention -- and to work together to manage and resolve their disputes. Such steps could provide the basis for further discussions aimed at narrowing the geographic scope of their maritime disputes, setting standards for behavior in disputed areas, and ultimately resolving their underlying disputes free from coercion or the use or threat of force.
So ruled the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands. [1]
China is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and thus is legally obligated under that treaty to abide by decisions of the Court. [Fat chance.]
In reaction to the Court's ruling, China's government and media (which is part of the government) have gone into paroxysms of denunciation and hysterical vows to ignore the ruling. Even before the official ruling, Chinese propagandists were issuing crazed rants, for example a front-page editorial spewed out the day before the Court issued its decision, by the so-called People’s Daily, blaring a conspiracy theory line that the case was a US and Philippine plot against China, a sneaky trap set by the US and the Philippines with the Court acting as an accomplice.
[I might interject here that, contrary to my somewhat misleading title, China isn't just now becoming an outlaw nation. Its invasion and absorption of Tibet was a criminal act also. And it has long been guilty of numerous, severe abuses of human rights. Oh, and it invaded Vietnam in 1979, an act of unprovoked aggression. (Actually the "provocation" was that Vietnam had the temerity to overthrow the mass murdering Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The U.S. was also mad at Vietnam for doing that.)]
China did not defend itself in the Court, obviously because it knew it didn't have a leg to stand on legally or factually, and it had already determined in advance that it would ignore the Court's decision. China claims, absurdly, that most nations support its illegal position on the series of disputes in the South China Sea.
The other nations whose feet China has been stomping on regarding their territorial claims and rights of free navigation and fishing, are Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Taiwan (which China insists is a mere "province" of China), and Vietnam, that last one a country China has repeatedly invaded over the centuries, including in 1979 with the connivance of the Carter regime of the U.S. [2]
China is a lovely neighbor, eh?
Only the Philippines had the guts to bring suit (so far) against China. It filed the case last year.
China is trying to grab undersea oil and gas, as well as hog the fish in the area. It has been caught illegally fishing in the territorial waters of other nations in the region. In return, its navy chases the fishing boats of other countries out of international waters, which it illegally claims as Chinese territorial waters.
Part of China's scheme has been creating artificial islands, reinforced with military runways and bases, around which it then claims territorial waters. The Court rejected this tawdry scam in its ruling. [3]
But the Court, lacking a navy, has no enforcement powers over China, It can't even freeze Chinese assets or bar China from the international financial system -only the U.S. has those powers.
There is a superceding law over all the formal laws and treaties in "international relations." It's an unwritten law; The Law of the Jungle. The principle of that "law" is, Might Makes Right.
In other words, as long as you can get away with it, it's "legal." Because you just declare it so.
Put another way, the powerful decide what the rules are, regardless of what's written down on some piece of paper they solemnly signed and ratified (aka a "treaty").
Such as when the regime of Bush the Younger declared U.S. torture wasn't torture, merely "enhanced interrogation techniques," a smarmy, slimy euphemism persisted in to this day by the U.S. corporate propaganda system, known by the opaque and evasive term, "the media."
And invading Iraq on a trump-up, transparently fraudulent pretext wasn't criminal aggression. (But the U.S. has been invading places since 1812. It's a tradition, you see.)
Speaking of the U.S, so far the U.S. response to China's contemptuous spitting on its international obligations under the treaty it signed, has been quite muted. Nothing from Obama, or even John "Skull and Bones" Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State. Just an anodyne, milquetoast burp from State Department chief mouthpiece John Kirby, saying, while not being able to comment yet on the merits of the case, the U.S. supports the rule of law and peaceful efforts to resolve maritime disputes. (The merits were already decided, Kirby, by the body empowered to decide them! And the Court vote was 5-0. Sounds pretty definitive to me.)
Highlights of the absurd, evasive, head-ducking press release from State Department Chief Flack Kirby:
"The United States strongly supports the rule of law. " [Actually it only supports it when it's in the U.S. "interest." Otherwise fuck the law. See for example invasion of Iraq, torture, subversion and overthrow of "hostile" government, assassinations, gross human rights violations domestically and abroad, etc. In fact, the U.S. doesn't even respect its own domestic laws or Constitution. Its police are virtually above the law, for example. Its police and secret police routinely violate the "guaranteed" rights of the Constitution, and always have. Officials break numerous laws all the time with impunity. If a big enough scandal erupts from lawbreaking, such as Reagan's criminal Iran-contragate conspiracy, a price is paid- namely "embarrassment." Man, if "embarrassment" were the only penalty for crimes, I'd be a bank robber! (Not really. Unlike the people in power here, some of us have a moral compass.)]
More from Kirby:
“In the aftermath of this important decision, we urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions,” he said, splitting the non-existent difference. Now you all behave yourselves.
"We are still studying the decision and have no comment on the merits of the case... As provided in the Convention, the Tribunal’s decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines. The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations." [My emphases. So even-handed! The ruling went almost totally against China. And why does the U.S. "have no comment on the merits of the case"? The merits have been decided, you just effectively admitted, Kirby.]
In fact, much of the statement is written as if the Court decided nothing. It urges the parties to "clarify" their claims and "work together to manage and resolve their disputes." Well they tried that already, that's why the Philippines went to Court! China is openly defying the ruling of the Court, despite the fact that they signed a treaty agreeing to accept dispute resolution through the Court. Now what's the U.S. gonna do about it? [4]
It has alliances, official and unofficial, with most of the countries on that list that China is pushing around. China has declared, quite furiously, that it intends to push ahead with its absorption of the various islands, reefs, rocks, and vast ocean area it claims as its property. The other nations cannot successfully confront China's military unless the U.S. military backs them up.
Best case scenario is that Obama steps up to the plate, and China backs down in a confrontation. But what happens in a decade or two, when China's military is stronger, maybe much stronger?
But there's no reason to assume Obama will even risk a confrontation at present. His punking out when Assad, the Butcher of Syria, crossed Obama's "red line" over using chemical weapons, does not inspired confidence. Obama is good at attacking the weak. Confronting even the somewhat strong is too risky for his taste. Backing down from China will be a green light for increasing Chinese aggressiveness.
THEY'VE THROWN DOWN THE GAUNTLET TO THE U.S. SO FAR THE U.S. IS PRETENDING NOT TO NOTICE.
1] The Court issued a press release and the judgment, which they call an "Award," as English .pdfs, July 12. Click on the indicated links for those. The judgment is 501 pages, by the way.
2] I remember well how the Chinese dictator at the time in 1979, Deng Xiaoping, came to the U.S. to be officially feted by president "Jimmy" Carter, and immediately after Deng left, China invaded Vietnam. Being a "cynic," that is, someone who isn't brainwashed by the crap in this country, I thought at the time that there was probably some connivance between the U.S. and China, given the timing, and the grudge the U.S. held against Vietnam for not surrendering after the U.S. killed at least 3 million Vietnamese, dropped 6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam (three times the tonnage the U.S. dropped in World War II), permanently poisoned the land with defoliants contaminated with carcincogenic, neurotoxic, and DNA-damaging dioxins, and the commisions of numerous war crimes and atrocities. Carter said the U.S. didn't owe Vietnam any apology (much less reparations) because "the destruction was mutual." (Yeah, the U.S. bombed Vietnam, and Vietnam shot down some of the bombers. So it's even.)
The Carter regime of course lied through their teeth and denied they'd had the slightest inkling of the impending invasion. (And this with the massive U.S. global surveillance system. Even if the Chinese couldn't resist sharing their plan with the U.S. so they could mutually gloat in advance, U.S. communications intercepts and satellite and airplane surveillance couldn't possibly have missed the military build-up on Vietnam's borders and the preparations for invading.) As it turned out, the Vietnamese beat back the Chinese invaders.
Some years later, the sinister Count Dracula lookalike, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Russian-hating Pole who was Carter's eminence grise as head of the "National Security Council," couldn't resist boasting about how Deng had told the American rulers of the impending invasion. The Carter regime imperialists couldn't have been happier.
Brzezinski, by the way, successfully plotted to lure the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan, another crime he unwisely boasted about. [See Brzezinski in his own words, from Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, although I can't vouch for the English translation. Also "THE STRATEGIC MIND OF ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: HOW A NATIVE POLE USED AFGHANISTAN TO PROTECT HIS HOMELAND," whose author interviewed Brzezinski, former CIA Director Robert Gates, who oversaw an operation to arm violent Afghan religious fanatics, the so-called Muhajideen, "Holy Warriors," starting six months before the Soviet invasion, high government apparatchiks Walter Slocombe, David Aaron, Dennis Ross, Leslie Gelb, leading Democratic Party operative Bob Shrum, Jim Mowrer, and journalist Hedrick Smith.
There are brief summaries of Brzezinski's anti-Soviet plot, which eventually culminated in the Afghanistan we have today, at "Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Now Orlando’s Nightmare," Huffington Post, June 10, 2016.
Here's Brzezinski's flippant dismissal of the immense "blowback" the U.S. and much of the rest of the world has suffered from the policy he sold to his stupid boss, president Carter:
“What was more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold war?”
("Afghanistan: The Soviet Union's Vietnam," Aljazeera, April 23, 2003.)
Carter was and has often been sold to the U.S. public as a "peanut farmer," but more pertinently he was a career naval officer who served on atomic missile submarines. He was steeped and marinated in the culture of U.S. imperialism and anti-Soviet ideology. He increased the military budget by 50% during his single four-year term in office, a fact that is never mentioned in the U.S.
Carter also initiated the contra terrorist war against Nicaragua. And before that, to get around Congress, he secretly had Israel supply arms to the dying regime of the evil dictator Somoza. On top of that, Carter declared that the Shah of Iran, rated as the worst dictator in the world by Amnesty International when he was in power, as a "good friend." As with Somoza, he tried to save him (and was considered a weakling by U.S. fascists when that proved impossible).
Jimmy Carter, getting to live to a ripe old age in his 90s, unlike so many of his victims, has reinvented himself (with U.S. media help) as some kind of Great Humanitarian. Yeah, right.
By the way, Deng Xiaoping ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few thousand eggs! (The "omelet" being the continual rule of bastards in power.)
3] See for example, "China has reclaimed 3,200 acres in South China Sea, Pentagon says," PBS NewsHour, May 13, 2016. PBS is the Public Broadcasting Service, set up by the U.S. government and funded in part by large corporations and a slew of major haute bourgeois foundations, plus U.S. government money and viewer donations.
4] I've reprinted the entire State Department press release here, so you don't have to have your ip address snatched up by the U.S. government and spyware planted on your computer. But if you insist on verifying the accuracy of it, click on the title below:
Decision in the Philippines-China Arbitration
Press Statement
John Kirby
Assistant Secretary and Department Spokesperson, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
July 12, 2016
The decision today by the Tribunal in the Philippines-China arbitration is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea. We are still studying the decision and have no comment on the merits of the case, but some important principles have been clear from the beginning of this case and are worth restating.
The United States strongly supports the rule of law. We support efforts to resolve territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea peacefully, including through arbitration.
When joining the Law of the Sea Convention, parties agree to the Convention’s compulsory dispute settlement process to resolve disputes. In today’s decision and in its decision from October of last year, the Tribunal unanimously found that the Philippines was acting within its rights under the Convention in initiating this arbitration.
As provided in the Convention, the Tribunal’s decision is final and legally binding on both China and the Philippines. The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations.
In the aftermath of this important decision, we urge all claimants to avoid provocative statements or actions. This decision can and should serve as a new opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime disputes peacefully.
We encourage claimants to clarify their maritime claims in accordance with international law -- as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention -- and to work together to manage and resolve their disputes. Such steps could provide the basis for further discussions aimed at narrowing the geographic scope of their maritime disputes, setting standards for behavior in disputed areas, and ultimately resolving their underlying disputes free from coercion or the use or threat of force.
Hooboy! This China thing is gonna be tricky! State Department Flack-in-Chief John Kirby. Maybe he should have taken the day off.
Self-fancied Master of International Intrigue Zbigniew Brzezinski.
"Peace and Love, Everybody!" James Earl "Jimmy" Carter.
Deng Xiaoping, erstwhile paramount ruler of China, finally deceased after a long, destructive life
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