Remember Chris Christie? He certainly wants you to, judging by the way he was talking in a town hall in New Hampshire yesterday.
Talking Points Memo reports that the presidential hopeful wants to take a “military approach” in response to what the US perceives as Chinese encroachment on islands in the South China Sea. He wants the US to lube up and flex its Jersey Shore muscles in order to send a message that the US “doesn’t respect their claims to the artificial islands… that are hundreds and hundreds of miles from the coast of China and are clearly in international waters.”
Some background, courtesy of Reuters: China has been building islands and stationing troops in the South China Sea in order to control trade in the region and also to secure possible stores of oil located in the seafloor. From the Chinese perspective, Chiang Kai-shek claimed the islands as spoils from WWII. From the US perspective, those islands lie within international waters, and so countries should be free to navigate around them without being rammed or fired at by water cannons. Bonus: One of the islands the Chinese are building on is called “Mischief Reef.”
The thing is, Christie’s position doesn’t seem to be much different than the Obama administration’s position. Obama thinks the issue can be “solved diplomatically,” but he’s not afraid to look swol’ while talks with China continue. In last few months, the US military has reportedly been flying surveillance aircraft and sending boats to the area, as well as providing military supplies and logistical assistance to the Philippines and the Vietnamese, who are also building islands in the area, though not in ways that piss the US off.
So why is Christie saying shit that might inflame the US’s second-biggest* creditor and spinning it as if it wasn’t a position the US is already taking? To find out, I called the New Jersey governor’s office, and someone there put me in contact with Christie’s hilariously named Leadership Matters for America PAC, who, a representative said, “handles these questions while he’s traveling.” LMFA.Org is a “non-connected” PAC, which means it can fund travel and other expenses for a candidate so long as they’re not, you know, a candidate yet. He hasn’t officially announced he’s running. The PAC has not responded to calls or e-mails from me today.
Right now it looks like Christie’s pulling a J.E.B. and trying to collect as much money as he can before announcing his run for the White House. He’s also trying to differentiate himself from the rest of the candidates. This hawkish stance lets him do both things by (1) affirming his coat-tossing tough-guy persona in his ramp-up to making a comeback from his Bridgegate scandal and (2) allowing him to cash in on American exceptionalism in the face of China’s rapid rise to power.
*As of February, Japan has overtaken China as the US’s biggest creditor.
