The South China Sea is not China’s, the Arctic is not Russia’s
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The top American and Russian diplomats met today in Iceland. The good news is that Tony Blinken was not publicly humiliated by this adversary’s representative – unlike when he submissively tolerated a diatribe against America by his Chinese counterpart two months ago.
The bad news is that, while Russia’s Sergei Lavrov chose to speak softly in Reykjavik, he swung a big stick in the run-up to today’s meeting of the Arctic Council there. In a recent press conference, the foreign minister declared, “It has long been common knowledge that [the Arctic] is our territory, our land.”
In fact, just as the Chinese Communists claim most of the South China Sea, thanks to their fortified bastions that can control it, Russia has been militarizing the polar region – and is getting into a position to do the same there.
We must challenge both.
This is Frank Gaffney.
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