U.S. Gunboat Diplomacy Will Only Embolden China
Trump's aggression in Latin America has given a powerful boost to Beijing in the Pacific.
In recent decades, as China adopted a sharply muscular approach to the Pacific Ocean, other countries began to sound the alarm, decrying Beijing's pushy new attitude toward a region full of much smaller and weaker countries.
Although China seemed to be adopting a bygone and largely discredited maritime strategy employed a century earlier by Western powers, many of its tactics were novel.
As it pressed legally and historically dubious claims to outright ownership of nearly all of the South China Sea, Beijing boldly built artificial islands from dredged sand in far reaches of the ocean for use as military outposts to enforce its control.
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Author's summary: Trump's actions boost China's Pacific presence.