'US challenges China's right to self-defense in South China Sea'

While the United States projects power across the Pacific Ocean to China's shores it condemns China for protecting its own backyard, says Professor Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday while commenting on reports that China has deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile system to one of the islands it controls in the South China Sea.

The US military announced last week that it will start formal talks with South Korea on placing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) on the North Korea's doorstep.

THAAD is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their terminal phase using a hit-to-kill approach. The Pentagon made the announcement after North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying what it called a satellite.

Washington says it wants to deploy the anti-missile system THAAD to the Korean Peninsula as a deterrent against North Korea’s ballistic missile program.

China says the possible US deployment of the anti-missile system to the Korean Peninsula is a threat to China's strategic interests, and Beijing will not allow its “national security interests to be damaged.”

America’s imperial prerogatives

“Apparently the US Obama administration feels entitled to assert its imperial prerogatives no matter where and when, and no matter whose sovereignty it tramples on,” Professor Etler said.  

“Most recently the US has orchestrated protests over Chinese civilian air flights to the Nansha (Spratley) Islands all the while stating without compunction that the US Air Force has the right to the overflight of Chinese claimed territory in the South China Sea at any time of its own choosing,” he added.

“Now it expresses concern over the alleged deployment of defensive surface to air missile batteries on the Xisha (Paracel) Islands. In addition rumors have been spread in the Western corporate media that India and the United States are talking about holding joint patrols in the region, although India has vehemently denied these reports. The US has also revealed plans to upgrade its military relations and presence in both the Philippines and Australia,” he continued.   

“The pretense for all of these aggressive moves by the US in the South China Sea is the claim made by Obama at the recent ASEAN/US summit that, ‘Freedom of navigation must be upheld, and lawful commerce should not be impeded.’ He continued by stating that, ‘The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and we will support the right of all countries to do the same.’ In point of fact this is a totally specious argument as neither China nor any other nation has ‘impeded’ the freedom of navigation’ nor ‘lawful commence’ through the South China Sea, and no one has the intent to do so, other than perhaps the United States itself.”

US threatens China’s interests

Professor Etler said “the South China Sea is a vital trade route for China and all of its actions there are predicated on the premise that the US is positioning itself to be able to interdict these routes whenever they see fit to do so. It is in China's national security interests to maintain a proactive stance in the South China Sea to preclude the US from impeding ‘freedom of navigation’ and ‘lawful commerce,’ not vice versa.”

“As in Europe where the US has inherited and adopted Nazi Germany's ‘Operation Barbarossa’ by pushing NATO to Russia's borders with the implicit threat to her security that it entails, in Asia the US has inherited and adapted Imperial Japan's World War 2 East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere with the intent to contain and curtail China's peaceful rise,” he stated.  

“The US is attempting to consolidate a military cordon sanitaire along China's eastern and southern seacoasts, extending from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines, Australia and across Southeast Asia to India. The so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal promoted by the US is the economic complement to the US ‘Asian Pivot’ and completes the attempt to recreate and revitalize Imperial Japan's strategic plans for the Asian-Pacific region,” he pointed out.  

“The US thus has inherited the fascist and militaristic operations of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan vis-à-vis Russia and China respectively. In fact, the US represents the highest and final stage of imperialism and is relentlessly dragging the world towards a conflagration of its own making,” Professor Etler concluded.

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