As if there weren’t enough alarming news to pay attention to between the impending vote on the future of American health care and a possible looming constitutional crisis, things are getting a little tense on the military front in multiple theaters around the world.
U.S. officials said on Monday that two Chinese jets had intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane above the East China Sea on Sunday, coming close enough to force the American plane to change direction. After the incident, China’s defense ministry said that U.S. surveillance activity in the area “threatens China’s national security, harms Sino-U.S. maritime and air military safety, endangers the personal safety of both sides’ pilots and is the root cause of unexpected incidents.”
These interceptions have happened before, but tensions are particularly high at the moment. The U.S. Navy recently sailed a destroyer close to a disputed island in the South China Sea in order to assert freedom of navigation rights in an area of the sea claimed by Beijing. The Trump administration is also preparing sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals for doing business with North Korea while the president has apparently now decided that China isn’t doing enough to pressure the country to give up its nuclear program. China, meanwhile, continues to object to the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system in South Korea, which the U.S. plans to test again soon.
So that’s China. Then there’s Iran.
On Tuesday, a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots at an Iranian patrol boat, believed to have been operated by the country’s Revolutionary Guard, after it came within 150 yard of the U.S. ships. Things are even testier than normal in the Gulf due to the ongoing blockade of Qatar by several of its neighbors, in part due to its friendly relationship with Iran. The U.S. position on that crisis has been a bit muddled, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson staying neutral at the same time President Trump has fully supported the blockade.
U.S.-Iranian relations continue to deteriorate: An American student was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for spying while the U.S. congress is preparing new sanctions to punish Iran for its ballistic missile tests.
While both the China and Iran incidents ended without any loss of life or major damage, they are the sort of thing that can easily lead to much larger and more dangerous confrontations. Now back to the tweets.
