What Defence?

"Our maritime police and fishing protection forces have practised extreme restraints; we will continue to hold on there. But if [the Chinese ships] continue to ram into us, we will respond with similar self-defence."
Ngoc Thu, vice commander, Vietnam coast guard

"The disruptive activities by the Vietnamese side are in violation of China's sovereign rights."
We want to tell the U.S. that the U.S. has no right to make irresponsible and unwarranted remarks on China's sovereign rights."
Hua Chunying, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman

"China seems intent on putting down its footprint squarely in contested waters and force Hanoi's hand."
"It appears a critical juncture has occurred and one would expect Hanoi to be weighing its options. Hanoi's back is against the wall, though China's policies -- which according to virtually everyone except China are baseless legally -- have brought about this situation."
Jonathan London, Vietnam expert, City University, Hong Kong

There's China, throwing its weight around again. That vast geography with its immense population and manufacturing clout in international trade has a lot of weight to throw around. And investments that are costly which it commits to must have a guaranteed pay-back for the giant country with its omnivorous appetite needs to grow its income, so bothersomely intransigent neighbours' insistence on their own sovereignty bear no moral clout with China.

Vietnam is simply next in line at the moment for its irritant-quotient to earn China's wrath. Its impasse with Japan over a stone outcropping in the middle of the ocean of no use to anyone belies the natural resources that each are certain lies beneath, ready at some future date to earn their weight in riches. Several of Vietnam's civilian vessels have been damaged with six people injured in the latest standoff with China over their disputed South China Sea declarations of ownership.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation Oil rig. CNOOC Photo

China's investment is a huge $1-billion deep-water drilling rig, the Haiyang Shiyou 98l. Which, most inconveniently for Vietnam, was towed by China to an area it claims as its very own. Vietnam is, needless to say, an irritant, a sea urchin bothering a whale. The whale unleashed its vessels to ram into the Vietnamese ships, firing high-powered water cannons on them for good measure. An unequal challenge and response over the past three days.

China claims the oil rig to be situated in its very own territorial waters and that would mean that Vietnam is sadly mistaken and should withdraw forthwith. The smaller countries in the region have been placed on notice by China's intransigent assertiveness backed up by military and economic might. And since might makes right, the United States has promised to intervene with its military/economic 'pivot'.



Are we to stay tuned in anticipation of an 'encounter' between the military might of China and the military might of the United States to settle the plight of China's neighbours having the misfortune of living beside a rapacious Colossus?

Might it be even remotely possible that the United States of America which has forsworn its big stick as too unwieldy in a modern world, so much so that it chose to abandon its previous promises in the Mediterranean to focus on the East, will now recall where it had laid that stick high up on a shelf where it was difficult to reach?