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The guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG-76) slipped quietly into the contested waters near Scarborough Shoal on the morning of Aug.13. As it pressed toward the edge of China’s declared "territorial sea," shadowing vessels from the People’s Liberation Army Navy locked onto its wake. Beijing wasted no time issuing a formal rebuke, saying it had monitored, warned and "expelled" the U.S. warship for violating Chinese sovereignty.

Washington’s response was equally terse: the U.S. Navy insisted that Higgins’ passage — part of a freedom-of-navigation operation — was fully consistent with international law, and that China’s assertions to the contrary were "false."

In the heart of the Indo-Pacific, the encounter was a revealing

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