It’s odd that all the increased collisions seem to involve Chinese vessels:
Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force ship JS Shimakaze (DDG-172), the second ship of the Hatakaze class, commissioned in 1988. She was slightly damaged in a collision with a Chinese fishing boat in the East China Sea on 30 March 2020.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Sci-fi genius Robert Heinlein warned readers never to attribute to villainy behavior that was adequately explained by stupidity. In other words, he believed malice should be the explanation of last resort for puzzling conduct on the part of people or groups of people; it shouldn’t be the default. Better to hunt for more benign explanations first. With apologies to Heinlein, I would amend his “razor,” or heuristic, slightly. It’s too narrow. There are other candidates than stupidity or purposeful villainy to account for misconduct. Factors like incompetence, bureaucratic inertia, and sheer accident form — and sometimes deform — human thought and action. They belong on the stupidity side of Heinlein’s ledger.
How about this: Never attribute to villainy behavior that can be adequately explained by human failings. That preserves the essence of Heinlein’s razor while widening its scope to fit reality.
Let’s use his revised heuristic to evaluate the Sino-Japanese collision. It’s certainly possible the mishap came about by accident. It took place at night, in crowded waters. If the U.S. Navy collisions of 2017 taught us nothing else, it’s that the crews of even frontline warships can suffer from a host of maladies, from overwork to shoddy personnel practices to doctrinal or training shortfalls. No amount of high technology — whether it’s Aegis radar or satellite navigation — can altogether forestall human error. It may be that the Japanese crew, the Chinese crew, or both blundered around in the dark and came to grief. By Heinlein’s lights that’s the generous and proper assumption until the facts become known. If they do.
Nevertheless, a silent corollary has to be appended to Heinlein’s razor: But don’t rule out villainy, either.
Especially when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For decades Beijing has made militiamen embedded in the Chinese fishing fleet an arm of maritime strategy. The maritime militia is an irregular adjunct to regular naval forces, including the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) and especially the musclebound China Coast Guard fielded over the past decade. Beijing touted the militia’s combat prowess as long ago as 1974, when Chinese naval forces wrested a tottering South Vietnam’s holdings in the Paracel Islands from it in a brief but bloody sea battle. Militia craft backed by the coast guard have been a fixture in the South China Sea ever since 2009, when Beijing declared “indisputable sovereignty” over the vast majority of that body of water — including seas allocated to its neighbors by treaty. The irregular force went into overdrive in 2012 during the standoff with the Philippine Navy and Coast Guard at Scarborough Shoal, deep within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. Fishing craft flood the zone in CCP-claimed waters and dare local coast guards or navies to repulse them. If the locals resist, the China Coast Guard backs up the militia. PLA regular forces provide a backstop should things go awry.
H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.
