Multi-national Rim of the Pacific training exercise is both providing the world with a glimpse into some of its most current naval technologies and raising the prospect of evovling international cooperation.
Senior Pentagon and Navy officials regard ongoing disputes with China over territorial claims in the South China Sea as part of a larger, complex relationship between the two countries involving competition and military tensions alongside cooperation, military-to-military exercises, port visits and mutual efforts to fight international maritime piracy.
During RIMPAC 2016, the Chinese brought a destroyer and a hospital ship, according to a report in Stars and Stripes.
Nonetheless, continued Chinese provocations in the South China Sea increase the risk of disrupting the balance of the U.S.-China relationship away from a broader context of collabporation and pushing it more substantially toward an intensifying military rivalry. Furthermore, upcoming China-Philippines arbitration is expected to bear prominently upon dynamics in the region. The two-countries are locked in a territorial dispute.
While the ongoing problems do not appear likely to result in military confrontation, the U.S.-China relationship seems to fall along two distinct, yet interwoven fault lines; one trajectory seems to be leading toward growing disagreements over actions in the South China Sea, and yet this stands in a delicate or precarious balance with fast-growing good-will, port-visits and military exercises between the two countries.
Navy Adm. Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, seems to indicate that both trajectories could potentially co-exist while, at the same time, expressing strong opposition to China’s territorial assertions in the South China Sea.
In public remarks months ago, Harris seemed to both address the seriousness of tensions and disagreements over issues in the South China Sea and also indicate areas of U.S.-Chinese partnership. There seems to be a clear hope among U.S. military leaders that South China Sea issues can be resolved without confrontation. A peaceful resolution of some kind could mean that the problems with China in the area do not necessarily have to greatly alter, disrupt or erase the larger calculus of the U.S.-China relationship — which includes growing cooperation.
