The USS Mustin, a Burke-class guided missile destroyer, sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Saturday (Dec. 19), the 12th time this year that a U.S. warship has sailed through the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese military said it has organized air and sea forces to follow and monitor the ship since the evening of the 18th, and expressed its firm opposition.
The U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet posted on its Facebook page that the USS Muscatine sailed through the Taiwan Strait on the 19th in accordance with international law, demonstrating the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region. U.S. forces will continue to conduct flights, navigation and other missions where international law permits.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense also confirmed Saturday morning that a U.S. warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait from north to south and continued southward. The Ministry of National Defense also said that during the passage of the U.S. warship through the Taiwan Strait, the national army used joint intelligence monitoring and detection as a whole to grasp the surrounding sea and airspace related dynamics, the situation is normal.
For the U.S. destroyer “Muscatine” sailing through the Taiwan Strait, the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater spokesman Zhang Chunhui issued a statement Saturday. He said the PLA’s eastern theater of operations organized sea and air forces to track and monitor the “Muscatine” throughout. He also said that the U.S. ships from time to time through the Taiwan Strait and hype and rendering, deliberately raise the heat of the Taiwan Strait issues, “to the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces ‘bright send autumn waves’, seriously endanger the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait region. The U.S. side’s behavior is essentially a ‘hybrid manipulation’ of military dazzle plus misleading public opinion, a strategic selfishness that uses Taiwan as a chess piece and Taiwan as a game, to which we express our firm opposition.”
The destroyer USS Mastin is based in Yokosuka, Japan. The U.S. warship last sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Nov. 21. At that time, the U.S. Seventh Fleet issued a news release stating that the guided missile destroyer USS Barry crossed the Taiwan Strait and entered the South China Sea on a mission. That was the fourth time the USS Barry crossed the Taiwan Strait this year.
Taiwan’s cross-strait relations have been deteriorating since Tsai Ing-wen became president in 2016 after she consistently failed to recognize the 1992 Consensus, official cross-strait relations have almost completely stopped and the mainland has made punitive moves against Taiwan such as banning land visitors from coming to Taiwan. At the same time, the warming U.S.-Taiwan relations have also irritated Beijing, especially in the past two years when the U.S. has passed a number of Taiwan-friendly bills, made several arms sales to Taiwan, and sent several high-ranking officials to Taiwan this year. China has responded by sending military aircraft to disturb Taiwan in the airspace southwest of Taiwan, and has repeatedly flown over the sensitive center line of the Strait, making frequent and intensive flights to disturb Taiwan almost routine. In addition, the PLA has conducted live-fire military exercises targeting Taiwan as a warning to the United States and Taiwan.
Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding III, former senior director of strategic planning for the White House National Security Council, told VOA that the U.S. has maintained a presence in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Taiwan Strait “to deter Chinese coercion. He said the U.S. military sends warships through the Taiwan Strait “clearly to demonstrate our presence and to show that we will comply with our commitment to provide defense for Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act. He said this practice will continue.
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