The Eagle, the Bear and the Dragon

On Thursday, July 28th, 2016, Beijing announced that the Russian Navy would be conducting joint naval exercises with the People's Liberation Army Navy in the South China Sea in September of that year. The announcement followed by sixteen days the ruling by the World Court that it had rejected China's claim to sovereignty across a vast expanse of the South China Sea. Competing claims to portions of the body of water with Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei were left unresolved. The exercises were conducted without threat or provocation. At the end of the exercises an announcement was made that a similar exercise would take place in September of 2017 in the Pacific Ocean. Shortly thereafter, the United States Navy made it known that it would be conducting naval maneuvers in the Pacific in 2017, also in September. What the Navy did not announce was that the new, state-of-the-art guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt, accompanied by an escort including Ticonderoga class cruisers and Arleigh Burke class destroyers, would depart from its home port of San Diego to lead those maneuvers.