An escalating series of clashes in the South China Sea between the Philippines and China could draw the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, into the conflict.
A 60 Minutes crew got a close look at the tense situation when traveling on a Philippine Coast Guard ship that was rammed by the Chinese Coast Guard.
China has repeatedly rammed Philippine ships and blasted them with water cannons over the last two years. There are ongoing conversations between Washington and Manila about which scenarios would trigger U.S. involvement, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview.
“I really don’t know the end state,” Teodoro said. “All I know is that we cannot let them get away with what they’re doing.”
China as “the proverbial schoolyard bully”
China claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, through which more than $3 trillion in goods flow annually. But in 2016, an international tribunal at the Hague ruled the Philippines has exclusive economic rights in a 200-mile zone that includes the area where the ship with the 60 Minutes team on board got rammed.
China does not recognize the international tribunal’s ruling.
- Star Trek - it’s a bit fuzzy, but the Eugenics Wars start around now-ish which lead into WWIII. So far, everything is happening more-or-less how the show predicted decades ago, with few discrepancies. It’s really creepy how accurate it all turned out to be. And while we all end up in socialist space utopia, it takes humanity about 130 more years to get there after a horrific nuclear holocaust and nearly a century of rebuilding after that. Also, all major governments destroyed and 600 million dead. It’s a big price to pay to turn the page on human history.
- Fallout - like the above, but worse. In the year 2077, after decades of escalating tensions between the US and China, a nuclear war erupts, devastating the surface of the earth. Even centuries later, humans struggle to rebuild and survive.
Only because I’m way too into the original lore, the war, iirc was started over a similar situation to what drew Japan into ww2. Oil resources were diminishing, China had far less available, and the US was happy to deny them theirs, so in 2066, they invaded Alaska. 11 years later, hasta lasagna.
Impressive. That’s correct.
And the Star Trek lore vs reality also isn’t exactly spot-on, but it’s close enough to be freaky.
And, one could argue, we’re also on-path for the future of The Expanse series, just due to our ongoing ecological disasters.
