Let me reemphasize: the United States and China can avoid war. I’m confident that we will avoid fighting each other. Rather, this is about maintaining robust deterrence in peacetime and in any crises that might erupt. Specifically, we must deter Beijing from attempting to resolve island or maritime claims disputes with the use of force, or even the threat of force. The aforementioned weapons systems, effectively deployed under the aegis of a broader strategy, can repeatedly convince China’s leaders that they will not succeed in their objective if they attempt to use military or paramilitary force to seize additional features and waters around them, or to prevent U.S. forces from operating in international waters and airspace nearby.

Proper efforts in the abovementioned areas will thereby support access to pursue our vital interests, which include unfettered access to all areas of operation allowed by international law. Access for American military force, economic power, political persuasion, and influence over regional events all require the support of military power that underwrites U.S. influence on behalf of the global system.

Supporting freedom of navigation, in turn, requires a broad array of measures, coordinated through a whole-of-government approach. Freedom of navigation operations should be pursued proportionally, in accordance with international law, whereby islands and rocks are accorded territorial waters and airspace out to twelve nautical miles, and reefs (features naturally underwater at high tide, any artificial augmentation notwithstanding) are accorded zero nautical miles. Such legal distinctions are important, and we should operate accordingly.

Additionally, we need to reinforce the global institutions that the Law of the Sea was designed to create and support. This entails underwriting with our power and example peaceful dispute resolution based on international law and international institutions. Among these, the United States must ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The United States should ratify UNCLOS because doing so would further support the rules-and-norms-based international system that Washington is rightly trying to foster—in part as a means to ensure the following: (1) that neither force, nor even the threat of force, will be employed to resolve island and maritime claims disputes in a dynamic but increasingly-tense region; and (2) that such destabilizing approaches will not be encouraged anywhere else.

On the latter point, it’s important to understand that roughly 38 percent of the world’s oceans are covered by Exclusive Economic Zones. The status of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea thus has implications for its status in the Persian Gulf, among other critical areas. Regardless of how the Iran nuclear deal plays out in practice, careful monitoring must proceed unfettered, as must energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

In any case, the application of maritime law in practice is shaped over time, and China is already benefitting from U.S. vulnerability in this area—vulnerability caused by not joining 166 other nations in becoming a party to UNCLOS. But don’t just take it from me. What’s far more important is that UNCLOS ratification is supported by:

1. The current President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the heads of the U.S. Maritime Services: the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard;

2. All their living predecessors, from Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Safeguarding the long-term future of the global maritime commons, including the freedom of the vital international sea-lanes of the South China Sea and the airspace above them, demands nothing less than the measures that I advocate here. We will have to accept some moderate friction, but we can manage that—all while cooperating with China and other nations in many areas of mutual interest. We live in a far better world today than Thucydides could ever have dreamed of. Let’s be sure to keep it that way in all respects, for everyone, regardless of their relative power.

Andrew S. Erickson is an associate professor at the Naval War College and an associate in research at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. This article is based on Dr. Erickson’s oral Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Hearing on “America’s Security Role in the South China Sea,” Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, 23 July 2015.

Image: Wikimedia/U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shannon Renfroe