South China Sea crisis flares up as Australian leader heads to Washington

That assistance perhaps should entail a U.S. escort for the Philippine supply ships, according to Mazza and another prominent analyst.

“That probably is the next step,” said Center for a New American Security senior fellow Lisa Curtis, a “key contributor” to U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific at the White House National Security Council from 2017 to 2021. “Unless China backs away from this confrontational approach, I do think it would be appropriate for the U.S. to consider naval escorts of Philippine vessels.”

The U.S. escorted supply ships between Taiwan and its outlying islands in 1958, when the U.S. still had a defense treaty with the Republic of China government that had taken refuge on Taiwan after the CCP’s victory in the Chinese Civil War.

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