When Chinese ships recently harassed the Impeccable, a US navy surveillance ship, in the South China Sea, they inadvertently shone the spotlight on brewing tensions in the region that were slowly moving on to the US radar.
The Chinese navy succeeded in making clear what Robert Gates, US defence secretary, was referring to when he mentioned concerns about “coercive diplomacy and other pressures” in a nuanced speech to Asian defence officials in Singapore last year.
“The Chinese are very sophisticated, but in this latest incident [in terms of harassing ships] I think they stepped in it,” says Marvin Ott, a south-east Asia expert at the National War College, Washington.
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