\u201cshared challenges\u201d<\/em> faced by the US and its Philippine ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThomas made his comments about three weeks after an incident in which the Chinese Coast Guard deployed water cannon against Philippine vessels that were trying to resupply a warship that Manila had intentionally grounded on a contested South China Sea shoal in 1999. The resupply mission was finally completed on Tuesday, delivering food and other goods to troops stationed on the World War II-era \u2018Sierra Madre\u2019 transport ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have to challenge people, I would say, operating in a grey zone,\u201d<\/em> Thomas told Reuters. \u201cWhen they\u2019re taking a little bit more and more and pushing you, you\u2019ve got to push back. You have to sail and operate.\u201d<\/em> He added, \u201cThere\u2019s really no better example of aggressive behavior than the activity on 5 August on the shoal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nThomas held talks with Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos, who heads the Philippine Western Command overseeing Manila\u2019s South China Sea interests. \u201cWe certainly shared challenges,\u201d<\/em> the US commander said. \u201cSo, I wanted to better understand how he views the operations that he\u2019s responsible for, and I want to make sure that he understood what I had available.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The commander of the US Navy\u2019s largest forward-deployed fleet has reportedly responded to a recent confrontation between Chinese and Philippine ships in the South China Sea by pledging to push back against the alleged aggression of Beijing\u2019s forces in the region. Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, on Sunday assured the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":38476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cww7news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/usnavy3.jpg?fit=770%2C511&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/754"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38477,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38475\/revisions\/38477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cww7news.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}