Quote Originally Posted by The Cuyahoga Kid View Post
Ok, but do they have a good plan?
It doesn't matter whether their plan is good or bad. What matters is they almost certainly will act, and act aggressively, and we might act, or we might not, depending on what a focus group says. The one thing they can be certain of is that we can't make up our minds and that will feed their determination to act. They will be so far inside our OODA loop that any plan at all will do. It doesn't matter a whit what they will be and what we are if we won't do anything.

It appears the Chinese objective is to establish effective control, or sovereignty or whatever over the whole of the South China Sea. Law of the Sea arguments and expressions of concern won't stop them. When they do that they will have demonstrated to the world that they can do as they like and nobody will stop them. That will increase their confidence in their ability to pull this kind of thing off which will make it more likely they will continue. And all those other countries in the area will see what they can do and will incorporate that knowledge into their accounting. Things are likely to get very complicated.

The belligerent actions mentioned in Adam G's post are shots fired near Filipino and Vietnamese fishing boats to drive them out of disputed areas. Information Dissemination blog covers this today. The Filipinos can't do anything much about it and the Vietnamese don't have much power but the Viets are very truculent so who knows what they may eventually do.