Mark Valencia

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Perilous South China Sea plan

On Jan. 11 former Exxon Mobil CEO and now U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state Rex Tillerson was grilled by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding his position on various current international issues. He was pressed by Texas Republican Sen. Marco Rubio regarding his view of recent actions by Russia in Ukraine, Syria and cyberspace. Tillerson wisely — some would say evasively — avoided direct answers repeatedly pleading ignorance and a need for more information.

He should have done the same for questions regarding China’s actions in the South China Sea. Instead he made several intemperate remarks that have alarmed China and the region, including U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

When the political history of the 21st century is written, it may well trace the tipping point toward war in Asia to our present decade.

According to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong: “No one can say what will happen in the next 20 years. Quite possibly the status quo will prevail, with repeated brinkmanship and occasional tensions, but hopefully no war. But worse outcomes are easily imaginable.”

He was referring to conflict on the Korean Peninsula and between Japan and China, but such a conflagration could well involve South Korea and Japan’s ally, the United States either directly or indirectly.…  Seguir leyendo »

On Aug. 26, I read a rather frightening op-ed in the Los Angeles Times coauthored by David Gompert — until recently the second-highest-ranking U.S. intelligence official in the Obama administration. What scared me was his sober assessment of the possibility that a conflict in the maritime arena could trigger a China-U.S. Armageddon — at least for Asia. This is not a new thought but heretofore had been the domain of fiction writers, wolf-criers and video-game makers.

There is now little doubt that China and the West are going to clash. They are already competing in both military and civilian ways and more fundamentally in values and the pursuit of political power.…  Seguir leyendo »

Beijing and Manila continue their increasingly shrill propaganda war over the South China Sea with each accusing the other of violating prior agreements and provoking tensions. What is going on and what are the possible outcomes of this dispute — and their implications?

Over the past few years, the Philippines and China have engaged in a series of increasingly dangerous incidents stemming from their conflicting claims in the South China Sea. On Jan. 22, a potential watershed date in the politics of the South China Sea, the Philippines, with tacit U.S. support, filed a complaint against China with the Law of the Sea’s dispute settlement mechanism — the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea based in Hamburg, Germany.…  Seguir leyendo »