For most Americans, conflicting claims by Asian countries to small islands in the South China and East China Seas are a sideshow that distract from more serious national security issues in Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and elsewhere. But recent events demonstrate that the United States ignores these island disputes at its peril. On May 9, a Philippine coast guard vessel sprayed with gunfire a Taiwanese fishing boat that was allegedly fishing illegally in the Philippines' "exclusive economic zone." In a case of what Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou called "cold blooded murder," Filipino forces fatally shot a 65-year-old fisherman in the back.
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