Playing High Stakes Chicken on the South China Seas

It wasn't so long ago that the People's Republic of China made an outrageous claim of sovereignty over the entire South China Seas based on some 500-year old map. A declaration of which the United Nations ruled against.  Since that time, the PRC has been militarizing small reefs with airfields, missile batteries, and radar installations. Neither the United States or the United Nations Recognizes the PRC's claims, but that hasn't stopped the Chinese Navy from making aggressive moves in International Waters to defend what it claims as its sovereign territory. If China's claim were valid, the United States would not have been able to conduct flight operations from Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War.  Not only that, but it would open a legal claim for Japan to claim Manchuria based on an 80-year-old map making an even greater International crisis China could have avoided. 

As you can see from these two U.S. Navy photographs, the USS Decatur came within 41 meters from the Chinese destroyer Lanzhou near the Spratly Islands. The Chinese warship came from behind and tried to cross the bow of the Decatur forcing the American Captain to throw the ship in reverse to avoid a collision. This was highly unprofessional on the part of the Chinese not to mention downright dangerous for the crews of both vessels. But this is what they are doing. They are engaging in a deadly game of high stakes chicken in International Waters where whoever flinches first may get killed. We at American Mishima hope it doesn't come to that. We believe this emboldened aggression is in part to test our current lack of leadership in Washington D.C. If this is what Beijing is counting on, they haven't truly tested the resolve of the United States Navy. Freedom of Navigation shall not be curtailed or infringed by an upstart world power ignoring International Law. Unfortunately, we do not see Beijing backing down, and at some point like the Cold War of times past, people will die, and history will look back at this time to ask why.