A recent report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) in Washington recommended a major escalation of action by the US and its allies in the South China Sea. It proposed more thorough-going military engagement including a program to demonstrate allied military superiority, deter further Chinese adventurism, and reinforce the confidence of regional allies and partners in the commitment of their Western partners to resisting Chinese coercion.

Last month, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C., think tank, suggested a new approach in “Countering China’s Adventurism in the South China Sea: Strategy Options for the Trump Administration.” The United States and its close regional allies — primarily Japan and Australia — must “thwart Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea and deter further Chinese adventurism,” author Ross Babbage wrote in the white paper. 

Both have an enormous stake in averting open conflict between China and the United States. China has claimed most of the international waters of the South China Sea and built island fortresses around them, in defiance of international law. On Thursday, presumptive US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US could blockade those islands, just hours after Australian security expert Ross Babbage had written in these pages that the Trump administration might turn to much tougher measures on the matter. Reinforcing the rules-based order in the region which the US itself created 70 years ago has to be a top priority for Tokyo and Canberra.

A recent joint publication by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Australia’s Strategic Forum. The report written by Ross Babbage, former senior Australian Defense Department official, concluded that the Obama government failed to “counter China’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea” and that during his second term, “Beijing militarized and established effective control over” this important strategic waterway.

Key members of the Trump administration are shaping to confront China in the South China Sea. Last month Donald Trump tweeted: “Did China ask us if it was OK … to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!” Trump is clearly irritated by Beijing’s behaviour and senior members of Trump’s team are also expressing deep concerns.

A report released last month by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) calls for the incoming Trump administration to initiate a major escalation of the US confrontation with China over the South China Sea. It is written by Ross Babbage, a former top-level Australian defence and intelligence official. Entitled “Countering China’s Adventurism in the South China Sea,” the report is highly critical of the “failure” of the Obama administration “to counter China’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea.” It speaks on behalf of militarist layers of the American defence establishment who have already been pressing for tougher action against China.