Balloon goes up over the South China Sea

http://atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-130814.html



Balloon goes up over the South China Sea
By Peter Lee
Aug 13, '14

There were signs of a major escalation in US activity in the South China Sea - but not during the ASEAN meeting.

~snip~

Fastforward to mid-July, and Secretary of State John Kerry floated the construction "freeze" proposal at the ASEAN meeting in Myanmar with the support of the Philippines.

The scheme was DOA, Dead On Arrival, bracketed by unambiguous PRC rejection before, during, and after the meeting. ASEAN declined to mention the freeze proposal in its communique, opting for endorsement of the code of conduct negotiations instead.

Another unfortunate takeaway from the ASEAN meeting was the unwelcome suspicion that the United States has compromised its "honest broker" status to the point that the real "honest broker", ie the independent-minded power that can and must be wooed by all parties with genuine concessions in order to hammer out unity and workable compromises is now Indonesia.