US' Red Sea bluster diplomatic theater: China Daily editorial

The United Nations Security Council's decision on Tuesday to extend the secretary-general's reporting mandate on Houthi attacks in the Red Sea should have been one of those rare moments when different countries acknowledged a shared interest in the freedom of navigation through one of the world's busiest maritime arteries.

Yet the meeting became noteworthy not for what the UN Security Council agreed upon, but for what one delegation chose to stage. The sharp exchanges between US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz and China's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Sun Lei revealed Washington's persistent habit of transforming multilateral diplomacy into geopolitical point-scoring.

China abstained on the resolution rather than exercising its veto, thereby allowing the reporting mechanism to continue. That alone suggested that Beijing hopes the UN continues playing its role to help ensure maritime safety in the Red Sea. It made Washington's decision to single out China all the more improper.

Waltz insisted that his remarks — falsely tying China to the supply of dual-use items to the Houthis — were not an "accusation". He then feigned bewilderment, professing to be "struggling to understand why it's offensive" to call upon all member states to intercept such "material", as if the offense lay not in his words but in the very act of taking umbrage at them.

Diplomacy is about context, timing and intent. Declaring that one is not making an accusation while partially citing so-called UN-sourced "statistics" intended to implicate another country resembles the familiar fiction of "No offense, but …" before proceeding to give offense. Waltz's response was a master class in theatrical innocence. An ambassador who lectures the UN about "statistics" and "concerns" somehow cannot grasp the causal chain of the Middle East crisis. It was carefully calibrated to appear "reasonable" while ensuring that the spotlight shifted from the resolution toward China.

China has always strictly abided by and implemented UN Security Council resolutions, and has consistently adopted a prudent and responsible approach to the export of military products and dual-use items, exercising strict controls in accordance with its domestic export control laws and regulations as well as its international obligations, Sun said.

Waltz's professed inability to comprehend Sun's justified rebuttal reveals something deeper: a US diplomacy so accustomed to its own "self-righteousness" that it cannot fathom why others might see things differently. Some US politicians would never pause to consider that the weaponry the US supplies to Israel fuels instability across the Middle East. They act as though the intelligence and Starlink capabilities the US provides to Israel are somehow exempt from scrutiny. True, the UN lacks the capacity to examine cargo manifests and port records of these US supplies. Yet these very tools — intelligence sharing and Starlink — are the indispensable instruments through which the US and Israel conduct targeted assassinations and "precision strikes".

But the fact is that neither China nor the US benefits from commercial vessels being attacked in the Red Sea. Their disagreement lies not over the objective but over diagnosis.

For China, as Sun said, the Red Sea crisis cannot be divorced from the wider instability engulfing the Middle East. The conflict in Yemen, the unresolved Palestinian question and repeated cycles of military escalation have created conditions in which maritime insecurity has become a symptom rather than the disease itself. Addressing shipping attacks while ignoring these underlying political crises is akin to repeatedly mopping the floor while leaving the leaking pipe untouched.

That diagnosis may be uncomfortable for Washington because it inevitably raises awkward questions about the US' role. Military interventions, sanctions, shifting alliances and proxy conflicts have become features of the Middle East thanks to the US' "concerns". Waltz extolled Washington's "peacemaking" credentials — ceasefires brokered, initiatives championed. But he omitted the inconvenient context: the very environment the US now seeks to stabilize was profoundly shaped, and in no small measure destabilized, by its own policies. One cannot plausibly claim the credit for extinguishing a fire while resolutely declining to investigate who supplied the kindling.

The distinction also explains the contrasting diplomatic styles. Beijing emphasizes dialogue, Yemeni-led reconciliation, humanitarian assistance and renewed momentum toward a two-state solution to the Palestinian question. Its successful facilitation of the rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran before the US-Israeli joint attacks on Iran demonstrated that regional diplomacy need not always proceed through military pressure or bloc politics.

Washington, by contrast, frames regional crises through the prism of strategic competition and transaction. The temptation to link almost every hotspot issue to a deal through which the US can realize immediate monetary gains may generate domestic political dividends, but it rarely advances real solutions.

The Red Sea suffers from a lack of down-to-earth, solution-oriented political pragmatism. The US cannot play Red Sea sheriff while ignoring its own role as regional arsonist in the Middle East crisis. Diplomatic theater grabs headlines; it does not safeguard shipping.