US Edition
The Carrier Strike Group of the Royal Navy is about to set out on a trip to the Pacific. One of the things we don’t yet know is exactly what routes the Strike Group – or parts of it – may follow. In particular we don’t know if the Group or elements of it will pass through the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait.
This matters, because China claims that everything inside the infamous “Nine Dash Line” – basically most of the South China Sea – is its own territorial waters. Equally without any basis in international law, China claims that the Taiwan Strait is its own internal waters.
The international law of the sea disagrees, saying that most of the South China Sea and the Strait are international waters – the “high seas”. The principle of freedom of navigation applies, asserting that any ship of any nation has the right to pass through such waters without interference except in clearly defined circumstances such as vessels engaged in piracy or slave trading.
Freedom of navigation is one of those things where if you don’t use it, you might lose it. The US Navy in particular carries out “Freedom of Navigation Operations”, or FONOPS, on a regular basis, sending its warships through disputed waters just to make the point that it can. As a non-signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, they find FONOPS a useful label, paradoxically to support the principles set out in the agreement they didn’t sign. In the Royal Navy, having fewer ships, we do this less often and we don’t particularly call it FONOPS – I don’t recall ever using the term in 20+ years at sea. Nonetheless we have been doing it on a routine basis time out of mind, going through the Strait of Hormuz in and out of the Gulf in the teeth of Iranian harassment.
Before it even gets to China, the Carrier Strike Group has to go through the Bab-el-Mandeb (“the Gate of Tears”) strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. This has been a danger zone for well over a year courtesy of a sustained missile, drone, and piracy campaign executed by the Houthis of Yemen. This is not technically a matter of freedom of navigation, as the strait lies within the territorial waters of Yemen, Eritrea and Djibouti. Instead different but equally important international principles, the rights of transit and of innocent passage, are being violated by the Houthis.
Going through the Bab-el-Mandeb will pose a dilemma for our military and political machines as they weigh up which is more important: getting through and preserving the carefully crafted programme in the Indo-Pacific or rolling up our sleeves and assisting the US effort to restore freedom of navigation there.
I wrote about this recently, suggesting the closer you get to being a naval officer, the more likely you are to accept the (small) risk of operating in the Houthi missile footprint and the more you would want to use the carrier in its primary strike role. However, the closer you get to the politics of it all, and the less you understand maritime operations and the risk inherent in them, the more you might be minded to just slip through. Our changing political relationship with the US and my personal assessment that the Houthis will be very hard to suppress by strikes and bombing alone are all factors in this complicated equation.
The Red Sea will not be the only time the natural tension between what is militarily and politically desirable will play out. The South China Sea and Taiwan Strait will both present a similar predicament. It’s fair to say that since the last visit by a Royal Navy strike group in 2021, Chinese maritime bad behaviour has proliferated off the chart. Of the 28 FONOPs the US Navy conducted in the twelve months running up to their last report dated May 2024, one third were conducted in the China Sea.
Even back in 2021 there was some aggressive to-and-fro between UK and Chinese official channels, with use of aggressive and threatening language from various sources and suggestions that anything we did would be at the behest of the US, as if we were unable to think for ourselves. The language this time will be no different in tone and is likely to do whatever it can to pick at the potential divide developing between the UK and the US.
This is why visits such as the recent one by our recent Chief of Defence Staff to China are important. Such visits are planned months in advance and are rare and full of risk. Nonetheless if done well they set the tone in a useful way. Talking is better than not talking and any discussion that de-risks the chance of miscalculation at sea or in the air is worth having. Much of the commentary criticising Admiral Radakin’s visit reflects the binary nature of conversations now rather than the shades-of-grey reality of the world as it is.
One of the subjects Admiral Radakin may have discussed would be a British intention to send a frigate or destroyer through the Taiwan Strait. We did this with HMS Richmond in 2021 and it passed without drama. Those who think this is overly provocative or risky should remember that we have been transiting the Straits of Hormuz now for decades, up close to a potential adversary who has military overmatch against any single unit and is more than happy to rush at you with fast boats, or light you up with fire control radars. But we still go there because: a) it’s our job, b) we know we can put up a good fight if we have to, and c) we have lots of mates on the other end of the radio who will come and get us if it all goes south.
The days of boldly sending entire carrier groups into the Strait are probably over: even the US doesn’t do this any more. Tactically it would be unwise to give away the location of the carrier itself like this. But the carrier could easily send jets to support a frigate or destroyer in the Strait, and a destroyer in particular would not be simple to sink with missiles, though there would be enough and to spare to get the job done. The Chinese would still need to think very carefully before making such an attack: it might well turn out that a British nuclear attack submarine was in the area or even in the strait itself, well able to respond by sinking any nearby Chinese ships and/or launching Tomahawk cruise missiles against land targets. A British carrier group could never stay close to China once the shooting started, but it could probably inflict a good deal of damage as it withdrew – mostly by the submarine, until the day when we get better weapons on our carrier jets and surface warships. The idea that China could locate the carrier far off and sink it with ballistic missiles is for the birds.
Also on this subject of what happens if things go wrong, conversations with the US Indo-Pacific Command throughout this deployment will be every bit as important as the ones had with Chinese military leadership last week. A good way to increase the likelihood of US military assistance off China would be to lend them a proper hand in the Red Sea beforehand. The oceans are connected in many ways, not just physically.
FONOPS transits, or just transits if you prefer, remind me of a police officer deciding whether or not to go into a dark alley on foot. You’ll need a reason to go in there, and you won’t do it to pick a fight, but what you will do is show whoever is in there you’re not afraid and they do not own the alley – you’re on your own, but you can summon serious help in an instant.
If you don’t go in there and would rather look away – or worse, you’re afraid – then eventually the gangs will take over. Then your options are to capitulate entirely or retake by force. Having a strong navy, making regular carrier deployments, helping our allies as we make the deployments and making the transits through the dangerous waters despite the enemy’s bluster are all about not needing to do either of these things.
The Carrier Strike Group deployment will deliver a level of political, military and communications bandwidth in dozens of countries that no other military asset can even get close to. It will involve the odd trip into a dark alley though.
A Royal Navy warship in the Taiwan Strait is like a policeman going down a dark alley
It’s the job, but if you’re smart you’ll have tough friends on call