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US projecting Cold War status quo in South China Sea: Pundit

Friday, 19 February 2016 2:11 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 19 February 2016 11:54 AM ]

The United States is projecting the Cold War status quo in the South China Sea, Professor James Petras says.

China is exercising the prerogatives of a rising power by defending itself with overseas bases, but the US wants to maintain the Cold War status quo, an American scholar of international relations says.

Professor James Petras, who has written dozens of books on the Latin America and Middle East, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on a statement of US Secretary of State John Kerry who has expressed “serious concern” over China’s alleged militarization in South China Sea.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Wednesday, Kerry did not confirm earlier reports on China’s deployment of missiles on a South China Sea island.

"We have said repeatedly with respect to China that the standard that should be applied to all countries with respect to the South China Sea is no militarization,” noted the secretary of state.

Kerry said the US was expecting a “very serious conversation” with Beijing over what the United States considers as a military build-up in a region gripped by dispute.

Professor Petras said “one has to put the issue of the Chinese organization of its military defense in a broader historical context.”

“China is a rising power - It’s the second most powerful economy in the world - and it’s looking to defend its waterways and its markets overseas. The US is the established world power since the end of World War II and it’s refusing to recognize sheer power, particularly in China’s periphery in the South-Pacific,” he stated.

“So China is really exercising [the] normal prerogatives of an emerging power by defending itself with overseas bases. The US refuses that. It wants to remain with the status quo of the post-World War II era; and it has rejected the idea of a co-prosperity sphere between China and the United States sharing hegemony in that region,” the academic noted.

“Because of that the US is mobilizing its client regimes in the region to oppose China even though these regimes and the countries in question have much closer economic ties with China,” he added.

“So I think this is an issue which needs to be understood and negotiated in [a way] which the US and China share their military responsibilities instead of one country rejecting the other’s attempts to share the military as well the economic markets in the region,” Professor Petras concluded.

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