That’s the headline of Joseph Bosco’s piece in Real Clear World, and he’s right.

However, we’ve no made such a stand, yet; all that’s happened is that a single destroyer was sailed “within 12 miles” of a Spratly island. What’s needed to truly take a stand is to sail an armed flotilla a closely as may be safely, from a navigability and maneuverability perspective, accompanied with low overflights by fighters.

This should be done with every Spratly island having PRC activity, it should be done with the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, and we should have flotillas cruising the Taiwan Strait.

As Bosco also noted, it would be beneficial if other nations—he suggested Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and ultimately all of ASEAN—participated in these sailings. However, the sailings are necessary, even if done unilaterally.

No more namby-pamby hemming and hawing.