Australia, Canada, the Philippines, and US mount South China Sea FONOP
By Colin Clark
on August 07, 2024 at 10:55 AM
Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity 2024
SYDNEY — As the foreign and defense ministers from Australia and the US meet in Washington this week, the Aussie military has announced a new Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) that will feature not just the two allies, but ships from Canada and the Philippines as well.
The announcement comes after a mid-June FONOP — in which nations sail military vessels through legally open water as a show of force — that saw Australia, Japanese, Canadian and Filipino ships work together. And analysts say that this is likely a sign of more to come.
The operation, set for today and tomorrow in the South China Sea, is a signaling device to China, which claims that territory for itself despite a legal ruling against that claim. Along those lines, the statement announcing the operation, by Adm. David Johnston, head of the Australian Defense Force, noted that “our four nations reaffirm the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award as a final and legally binding decision on the parties to the dispute.
Collin Joh, an analyst at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, noted that this effort is part of a “progression from just bilateral to trilateral, and now quadrilateral maritime cooperative activity (MCA) formats” in the region.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/08/australia-canada-the-philippines-and-us-mount-south-china-sea-fonop/
