With Beijing’s military nearby, US sends 2 aircraft carriers to South China Sea

Two US aircraft carriers sailed to the South China Sea on Saturday for what Navy officials described as a freedom-of-navigation operation while China’s military conducts exercises nearby.

The carriers — the Ronald Reagan and the Nimitz — deployed “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to a statement by the Navy’s 7th Fleet. It said that the ships, which were accompanied by warships and aircraft, were conducting exercises to improve air defense and long-range missile strikes in “a rapidly evolving area of operations.”

Beijing has staked claim to much of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which one-third of global shipping flows, over the objections of other regional powers and an international tribunal that has rejected China’s assertions.

The deployment of a US aircraft carrier and its strike force is often used as a signal to deter adversaries. Deploying two at once is recognized as a significant show of force; in 2016, then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter toured two aircraft carriers that were cruising through the South China Sea as a reminder to Beijing of the United States’ commitment to allies in the region.

A Navy official Saturday described the mission as a routine operation, downplaying the specter of a deliberate show of force to the Chinese military as it conducted its own military exercises in the sea. The official, who was not authorized to describe the details and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the carriers’ mission had been previously planned to ensure that shipping lanes and navigation remained open in international waters.

Lt. James Adams, a US Pacific Fleet spokesperson, said the operation “is not in response to any political or world events.”

But earlier in the week, the Pentagon said it was monitoring China’s military exercises in disputed waters and territory near the Paracel Islands.

“Conducting military exercises over disputed territory in the South China Sea is counterproductive to efforts at easing tensions and maintaining stability,” the Pentagon said in a July 2 statement.

It also said that the Chinese exercises, which were supposed to conclude Sunday, violated a 2002 agreement on international conduct in the South China Sea. Beijing’s actions, the statement said, “will further destabilize the situation in the South China Sea.”

The Chinese maritime authorities declared in late June that an expanse of the South China Sea around the Paracel Islands — called the Xisha Islands in Chinese — would be off limits to other vessels for the first five days of July while Chinese military exercises took place there.

The Chinese government had no immediate public reaction to the announcement about the two US carriers, but Beijing was most unlikely to buy the idea that the move was just a coincidence. A smaller US Navy operation in the South China Sea over recent days had already drawn ire from China.

“This provocative conduct by the United States gravely violates the relevant international laws and rules, and seriously violates Chinese sovereignty and security interests,” Senior Col. Li Huamin, a spokesman of the Chinese military Southern Theater Command, said after the USS Gabrielle Giffords, a littoral combat ship, conducted operations last month in the South China Sea, according to Global Times, a Beijing newspaper. “This is deliberately increasing security risks in the region and could very easily spark an unforeseen incident.”

China claims many islands and outcrops and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea as its territory, despite rival claims from Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries, as well as from Taiwan. Beijing has regularly accused the United States of provoking tensions through military operations in the sea, while the United States and other countries maintain their operations are lawful and a way of reminding China not to restrict passage through the area.

“As a country lying outside the region, the United States has been using the excuse of ‘freedom of navigation’ to dispatch military-use ship and planes to make provocations in the East and South China seas,” Senior Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said at a news conference in Beijing late last month. “This is seriously damaging regional peace and stability.”

The Ronald Reagan is usually stationed in Japan; the Nimitz reached Asia’s coast June 17 and has also been conducting joint exercises with another aircraft carrier, the Theodore Roosevelt. The Roosevelt returned to sea June 4. It had spent weeks docked in Guam, with its crew quarantined, to deal with a coronavirus outbreak aboard earlier this year.