So, I hadn't really looked that close at the Chinese claims on the SCS until a recent story on NPR, or at least I think it was NPR by all the shrieking about Trump in other stories, but I digress.
It appears as though that China is claiming areas as far as 1000nm's off their coast as "territorial waters" and of course building those militarized islands in that zone, many of which are 5-6-700 plus nm's off the Chinese coast.
So I went to our good friends at the USCG and looked at their U.S. territorial waters map (because we're pretty ballsy in our own passive-aggressive hegemonic way) and it was as I expected common sense zones off the U.S. coasts and relevant U.S. territories. Unless I missed something, it was rather conforming to geography and pretty much as one would expect. It makes no sense for the U.S. to get all nutty about such things because free navigation is a lynch pin of U.S. economic life.
I don't see how the U.S. and it's allies can let this Chinese position stand as they're clearly trying to strategically choke this major shipping corridor for International trade and resources.
Hopefully cool heads prevail, but this is one case where the U.S. must ensure free navigation for all.
