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US moves in South China Sea highly provocative: Commentator

In this March 12, 2015 US Navy handout photo, the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen (DDG 82) is underway in formation with the Republic of Korea patrol craft Sokcho (PCC 778) during exercise Foal Eagle 2015. (AFP photo)

Press TV has interviewed Richard Becker, a political commentator in San Francisco, about the United States sending a warship very close to China’s islands in disputed waters of South China Sea.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: China and the US trade blames for militarizing the South China Sea. Who is right and who is wrong? It appears that South China Sea, as its name means, is part of China and the US does not belong there.

Becker: Certainly. I mean there is a dispute over some of these islands and some of them are called rocks or shoals between People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, but the United States is not anywhere near that area. I mean why is the United States intervening in this area, I think there is a clear reason, but this is not only a provocation, I would say it is reminiscent of gunboat diplomacy that the US used to practice against many countries, but particularly against China before China was truly an independent country before 1949.

And this is a continuation of that. It is highly provocative behavior, and it is intervention in a disputed area that the United States has absolutely no business from a logical point of view intervening in, but the real reason that they are doing it of course is that the US has made a pivot toward Asia, as they call it a pivot to the Asia-Pacific where it plans to have 70 percent of its military forces located within a few years, and they are attempting to surround China with our military alliance that is directed against the People’s Republic, and of course that is the real reason why, and for general reasons of empire, that the United states is sending its warships into this disputed area.


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