US Navy again has two provider strike teams in the South China Sea

• The US Navy once again has two carrier strike groups conducting dual carrier functions in the South China Sea.
• For the second time in two weeks, the Nimitz and Ronald Reagan carrier strike teams are education collectively in the strategic waterway.
• The routines, which the Navy states are unrelated to present occasions, arrive all through a 7 days in which the US and China have traded barbs more than the South China Sea.
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For the next time in two months, the US Navy has two provider strike groups conducting twin provider functions in the South China Sea, a waterway in excess of which the US and China have been buying and selling jabs recently.

Above Fourth of July weekend, two Navy provider strike teams led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan trained with each other in the South China Sea. The final time the Navy experienced two carriers running together in the South China Sea was practically 6 many years back.

The Nimitz and Ronald Reagan carrier strike groups have connected up again to carry on their significant-finish dual provider functions, the Navy mentioned Friday.

“Nimitz and Reagan Provider Strike Teams are running in the South China Sea, wherever global legislation allows, to reinforce our motivation to a Absolutely free and Open up Indo-Pacific, a regulations primarily based intercontinental order, and to our allies and associates in the region,” Nimitz Provider Strike Team Commander Rear Adm. Jim Kirk claimed in a assertion.

The Navy observed that the provider operations are unrelated to present-day gatherings, but the carrier functions do notably occur at a time of heightened tensions with China.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the US before this thirty day period of flexing its muscle mass to “undermine the peace and security in the South China Sea.” This week, the International Ministry criticized the US for sending “significant fleets of sophisticated armed service vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea to flex muscle groups and stir up difficulties.”

On Tuesday, USS Ralph Johnson, a person of the destroyers sailing with the Nimitz provider strike group, performed a flexibility-of-navigation operation in the contested Spratly Islands, complicated sure navigation restrictions by China and other claimant states.

Prior to the Navy flexibility-of-navigation procedure, at the very least the sixth this calendar year, Secretary of Point out Mike Pompeo issued a assertion Monday asserting the US is aligning its South China Sea plan with a 2016 international arbitration tribunal ruling and formally rejecting numerous of China’s statements to the contested waterway.

“Beijing’s promises to offshore means throughout most of the South China Sea are totally unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to command them,” he mentioned. “The PRC’s predatory globe look at has no position in the 21st century.”

China’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs called the US statement on the South China Sea “irresponsible.”

“It violates and distorts international law, intentionally stokes territorial and maritime disputes, and undermines regional peace and security,” Ministry of Overseas Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian mentioned Tuesday.

The South China Sea, prolonged a sizzling place, has yet again come to be a flash issue in new months as the US has stepped up its military services activities in reaction to “opportunistic action by the PRC” to just take gain of the COVID-19 disaster and “coerce its neighbors and press its unlawful maritime statements in the South China Sea,” the Pentagon mentioned earlier.

The world wide coronavirus disaster that commenced in China but has given that spread across the US because of to domestic mishandling has triggered a increase in US-China tensions, causing problems across the bilateral relationship.