https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyuuNFn0OCY
The White House has nominated a naval officer with command experience in the Western Pacific to lead the 7th Fleet as it aims to keep pace with its Chinese competition.Rear Adm. Karl O. Thomas, the assistant deputy chief for naval operations, plans and strategy at the Pentagon, would return to Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, to command the largest of America’s overseas naval fleets, the Defense Department announced Wednesday. Thomas previously served as commander of Task Force 70 and Carrier Strike Group 5, centered on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, homeported in Yokosuka.The 7th Fleet, which includes up to 70 vessels and 20,000 sailors, may keep the peace or shoulder the U.S. response if hotspots like the contested Senkaku Islands or Taiwan kindle into conflict.President Joe Biden’s administration has affirmed its commitment to assist Japan should the Senkakus, a group of islets set strategically northeast of Taiwan, come under assault. Japan complains of increasing instances of China’s coast guard interfering with Japanese fishing vessels in the area. Both nations this year have empowered their coast guards to open fire there if threatened.The head of Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson, in March told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China may be contemplating a move to reclaim Taiwan sooner rather than later. China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.Unlike its treaty with Japan, the U.S. has no obligation to come to Taiwan’s military support, but it aids the island democracy through outward signs, such as the visit last week of by former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and two former deputy secretaries of state, and by direct arms sales.The U.S. recognizes China’s claim but considers Taiwan’s status unresolved. The 7th Fleet periodically sends warships to the Taiwan Strait in defiance of Chinese demands that third nations seek its permission before steaming through the 110-mile-wide passage.The 7th Fleet also carries the flag on an increasing number of freedom-of-navigation patrols through the South China Sea, a 1.3 million square-mile area beset by knotty quarrels.An estimated $3.4 trillion in trade passed through the South China Sea in 2016 out of a global total of $15.9 trillion, according to ChinaPower, an online project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.China has built up and occupied seven small islands and reefs in the Spratly Islands and constructed airfields, barracks and missile sites there, along with other outposts manned by the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, according to the CIA World Factbook.China ignores a 2016 U.N. tribunal decision in favor of the Philippines in a dispute over sovereignty in the area.Beginning in late March, the Philippines, a U.S. ally, and China engaged in a simmering stand-off when dozens of Chinese maritime militia vessels, posing as fishing boats, anchored at Whitsun Reef inside the Philippine economic exclusion zone, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
