Last week, group of Russian and Chinese warships sailed in international waters near the Aleutian Islands chain of Alaska, prompting four U.S. destroyers to monitor the naval patrol, based on remarks from U.S. defense officials and lawmakers.
In a statement over the weekend, Alaska’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, revealed that a total of 11 ships had been discovered “transiting US waters in the Aleutians,” drawing their conclusions from a classified briefing and calling such actions “an incursion.”
Sullivan declared that such activities were “yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” indicating his approval of the U.S. response entailing American warships.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Northern Command has authenticated reports that Russian and Chinese ships were staging a patrol in the area, but failed to elaborate on the number of ships involved. According to The Wall Street Journal, the agency’s spokesperson pointed out that “air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense” of the United Statss and Canada.
Nonetheless, the spokesperson did not reiterate the senators’ aforementioned comments about an “incursion,” highlighting that the Chinese-Russian patrol group “remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”
Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, slammed the patrol as “a historical first” and “highly provocative” in light of hostilities over Taiwan and the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, according to the WSJ.
On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry maintained that Moscow’s Navy would continue patrols in the Pacific alongside Chinese warships, sailing through the Sea of Japan, La Perouse Strait, the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the Kamchatka Strait. The ministry then said that the exercises would entail a joint anti-submarine exercise, as well as helicopter landings and takeoffs from the decks of each other’s ships.
Alluding to the drills, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, reiterated that “this action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation,” in an apparent reference to the conflict in Ukraine and the face-off between the United States and China over Taiwan.
America’s response to the recent Sino-Russian navy patrol has provoked some backlash among international observers, some of whom have stated that the United States has been hypocritical in its foreign-policy actions.
For one, America has been involved in the increased militarization of its allies located around China and Russia, provoking not only the conflict in Ukraine that erupted in February last year, but also risking a second conflict in the Taiwan strait. Thus, America is holding itself up to a double standard: While it castigates Russia and China for conducting navy patrols around its waters, it blatantly conducts military and espionage activities in foreign countries, such as setting the stage for color revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
By setting up a worldwide military presence that encompasses hundreds of military bases, the U.S. establishment claims to champion the self-determination of other countries. However, reality has proven that America has been encroaching on the interests of states and governments that it regards as hindrances to its own global dominance, stoking domestic tensions in those countries and even trying to topple governments it deems would not align with globalist designs.
Take the case of Russia, for instance. For years, the United States has pursued a policy of expansion of NATO eastwards, including former Soviet-aligned Warsaw Pact members, transforming NATO from a bloc of collective self-defense in a particular region into an ideological puppet that serves globalist goals. Such has been the case of American meddling in alliances like NATO that observers have called into question the significance of the words “North Atlantic” in the bloc’s name, amid Washington’s efforts to extend its orbit to the Asia-Pacific.
Similarly, China has been incensed at American attempts to step up its military and naval encirclement around China’s borders, with the current administration of Joe Biden using Taiwan’s independence as a pretext to escalate hostilities, notwithstanding America’s official “One China” policy.
Meanwhile, America has pressured and influenced more countries in the Asia-Pacific to accept an enhanced American military presence. For example, the United States gained access to a number of bases in the Philippines this year, with four new military bases to be used by American forces deployed to the Philippines, according to previous statements by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. earlier this year.
The Marcos administration announced that it would permit rotating batches of U.S. forces to indefinitely stay in four new Philippine military camps in addition to five local bases earlier designated under a 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).
Locations for the new bases will include areas in the northern Philippines, as these would provide U.S. forces with a vantage point close to southern China and Taiwan.
“There are four extra sites scattered around the Philippines — there are some in the north, there are some around Palawan, there are some further south,” Marcos told reporters during an event marking the Philippine Army’s founding this year.
A former Philippine military chief has publicly disclosed that the United States had requested access to military bases in the provinces of Isabela, Zambales, and Cagayan, all on the island of Luzon, facing north toward Taiwan, and on Palawan in the southwest, near the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Some local government leaders in the Philippines objected to Marcos’s move to permit U.S. forces access to the country, as they were concerned that they would be dragged into possible Sino-U.S. conflict over Taiwan.
Notably, the United States has committed millions of dollars in infrastructure investments at the five current bases in the Philippines — namely, the Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan, Basa Air Base in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu, and Lumbia Air Base in Mindanao, as well as Papua New Guinea, where a defense cooperation agreement was also recently inked.
Another example of what many see as American hypocritical foreign-policy behavior is the fact that although the United States regularly sails warships through the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait on the pretext of “freedom of navigation,” Washington slams Beijing’s retaliatory actions as “aggressive” and destabilizing regional peace.
Understandably, questions abound on what can be considered as standard protocol stemming from sovereign rights. If America can sail freely in the South China Sea waters on the grounds of “freedom of navigation,” it technically should not complain that Sino-Russian patrols near Alaskan waters are “highly provocative.”
Indeed, some argue that Moscow and Beijing are being drawn closer together as a result of American foreign policy.
From the perspective of both Russia and China, Northeast Asia contains many strategic interests. Thus, they monitor the increase of American military power on the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
That being said, the present establishment in Washington, along with past U.S. governments, has been acting as if America has rights which other countries do not. With Western-backed globalist media outlets promoting a narrative that justifies American military presence globally while depicting Sino-Russian cooperation as a potential threat, it is no wonder that public confidence in the U.S. government and mainstream-media outlets have decreased over the years, given a lack of accountability in face of blatant double standard.
This only serves to illustrate the wisdom of America’s Founders, who promoted a foreign policy of non-interventionism and friendship with other countries.
