As we continue our operations in these international waters, the Chinese are pushing their naval elements into what they wrongly claim to be their territorial waters. The result is another incident:
China's Foreign Ministry acknowledged for the first time Tuesday a collision last week between a Chinese submarine and a sonar being towed by a U.S. Navy destroyer.
The incident occurred Thursday, spokesman Qin Gang said, while giving no details.
The U.S. Navy has had little comment on the incident, other than to say that the USS John S. McCain's towed sonar had been damaged. There have been no reports of injuries or damage to either vessel.
It was an accident, it seems. But it was an accident that naturally follows from the decision by China to aggressively confront any American ships (or planes, if you'll recall the 2001 EP-3 incident) in the region.
While we don't want a war over this body of water, we cannot let the Chinese chase us out of the sea. We've never accepted the Black Sea as the Soviet Union's sole domain and we didn't accept the Gulf of Sidra as Libyan waters. But as the latter shows, a shooting match can result from conflicting claims.
We seriously need some type of agreement with China on the rules of the road when our vessels and planes are in proximity. If not, somebody's vessel is going to go to the bottom of the sea in a future incident.
