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Our first story of the week centers on what could be called a high stakes and dangerous game of chicken played out by warships in the Arabian Sea. It involves the United States and Russia. But if you ask who's responsible you'll get two very different answers. Last week the U.S. Navy said one of its destroyers was aggressively approached by a Russian ship.
American defense officials say this video show the Russian vessel coming as close as 180 feet from the American one before changing course. The U.S. Navy says it sounded the International Maritime signal for collision danger and asked the Russian ship to change its course but that because it delayed following the rules the Russian ship increased the chances of a collision before eventually turning away.
Russia disagrees with that summary. It says the American warship broke international rules by making a move that crossed the Russian ship's course and that it was the Russian ship that prevented the collision by maneuvering away. Something like this between the same two countries also happened last June.
That incident was in the Pacific Ocean. The two warships involved came so close that the U.S. had to make an emergency move to avoid a collision. But then as now Russian media said it was their country's ship that suddenly changed direction to avoid hitting the American one.
There have been a number of military incidents that American officials have called unsafe or provocative. A reporter from National Public Radio described them as cat and mouse games between the U.S. and Russia that were common during the Cold War. The latest near miss in the Arabian Sea came in a body of water where's there's a lot of maritime traffic and where a large amount of the world's crude oil passes through.
