Amid Chinese Rhetoric of War, the Ideal Remains Constant: Sustaining Freedom of Navigation

While the United States(US) has affirmed freedom of navigation on international waters by sailing into the disputed South China Sea, some careless rhetoric threatening war, has emerged within China. 

Whereas Beijing and its communist mouth-pieces, including the Global Times, have asserted that China is not frightened to fight a war with the US on the South China Sea, the ideal of freedom of navigation and the honoring of treaties with allies in the region, must remain constant and be resoundingly affirmed.

Therefore, while nobody in Washington expects China to be afraid of anything, the US and western nations have the responsibility of sustaining freedom of navigation on international waters in spite of excessive claims by China to more than a lion's share of the resource-rich South China Sea.

Moreover, Washington must always affirm that International Law, and not China's version of jurisprudence, remains fluent on international waters and lands. 

So while China continues to fight graft and corruption within its own armed forces, careless commentary of war within Beijing should be tempered with the reality and all the effects of possible war,  including the morale of young Chinese soldiers, who have come of age in the post Tienanmen Square era. 

Nobody wants war. But it is the duty of responsible western nations to secure and to sustain freedom of navigation on international waters and to ensure the dignity and the sovereignty of nations such as the Philippines and Japan and other claimants to freedom of access to the South China Sea.