Eli Lake, Columnist

Kerry's Soft Words Blunt U.S. Hard Power in South China Sea

The secretary says there is "no military solution." But that's been the key to the U.S. approach.

September 2, 2016 at 10:00 AM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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There are times when I want President Barack Obama to invent a global crisis for John Kerry to solve, just to keep his secretary of state from making the real ones worse. Consider what happened at New Delhi this week, where Kerry offered a remarkable comment about the current tensions in the South China Sea. He said there was no "military solution."

Kerry was asked about China's public indifference to a decision in July from an international tribunal at the Hague that flatly rejected China's claims to the territorial waters of the Philippines in the South China Sea.