Singapore // Pentagon chief Jim Mattis moved to reassure Asian allies on Saturday that the US can work with China on reining in North Korea without compromising its opposition to Beijing’s “militarisation” of the South China Sea.
President Donald Trump – who frequently denounced China on the campaign trail – has turned to Beijing to help pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programme.
The move prompting broad concerns that America will go easy on China’s maritime activities.
Longstanding partners are also mortified that Mr Trump has seemed indifferent to traditional alliances, and have interpreted his pulling out of a trans-Pacific trade deal and the Paris climate accords as signs of broader American disengagement.
Mr Mattis, arguably Mr Trump’s most important statesman as the new president hopes to slash the State Department, tried to allay the fears.
“In the security arena, we have a deep and abiding commitment to reinforcing the rules-based international order, a product of so many nations’ efforts to create stability,” Mr Mattis said in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a major defence summit for countries from the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
Calling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions a “threat to us all,” Mr Mattis asked the international community to come together on the issue.
It is “imperative that we do our part each of us to fulfill our obligations and work together to support our shared goal of denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula,” Mr Mattis said.
“The Trump administration is encouraged by China’s renewed commitment to work with the international community toward denuclearisation,” he added.
Pyongyang on Monday test-fired another rocket, the latest in a series of launches and atomic tests that have ratcheted up tensions over its quest to develop weapons capable of hitting the United States – something Trump has said “won’t happen”.
The defence chief spoke directly to concerns America might grant concessions to China to ensure cooperation on North Korea, saying the issue was not “binary” and that the United States would continue to pressure Beijing elsewhere.
“Artificial island construction and indisputable militarisation of facilities on features in international waters undermine regional stability,” Mr Mattis said, calling China out over its “disregard for international law” and “contempt for other nations’ interests”.
The US Navy on May 25 conducted a “freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, when the USS Dewey guided-missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, despite partial counter-claims from Taiwan and several South East Asian nations including the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
It has rapidly built reefs into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes and other equipment.
*Agence France-Presse