Outside the small realm of Asia-Pacific security watchers, it is hard to get anyone in the United States worked up about the possession of an uninhabited shoal on the other side of the world. But in the region itself, these incidents are noted and matter a great deal. So if China plays its hand intelligently, it has a good chance of advancing its territorial claims in a rapid but incremental fashion, without provoking a decisive pushback from the United States.
