Generally, whenever Donald Trump’s name is invoked in reference to the policies of the Biden administration, we wind up talking about Joe Biden undoing as many of Trump’s policies and reversing all of the progress that had been made as quickly as possible. This applies to everything from border security to taxes and beyond. But now we’ve finally found one area of policy where the two men seem to be in agreement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was sent out yesterday to issue a rebuke to China regarding their claims of ownership of various maritime properties in the South China Sea outside of their territorial waters. This was the same policy espoused by Mike Pompeo when Trump was in office, so on at least one foreign policy front, we’re seeing some consistency.

The Biden administration on Sunday upheld a Trump-era rejection of nearly all of China’s significant maritime claims in the South China Sea. The administration also warned China that any attack on the Philippines in the flashpoint region would draw a U.S. response under a mutual defense treaty.

The stern message from Secretary of State Antony Blinken came in a statement released ahead of this week’s fifth anniversary of an international tribunal’s ruling in favor of the Philippines, against China’s maritime claims around the Spratly Islands and neighboring reefs and shoals. China rejects the ruling.

Ahead of the fourth anniversary of the ruling last year, the Trump administration came out in favor of the ruling but also said it regarded as illegitimate virtually all Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea outside China’s internationally recognized waters.

This is one of the most hawkish announcements to come out of the Biden administration to date and it frankly surprised me in a pleasant fashion. Calling on China to settle any territorial disputes peacefully through United Nations arbitration was the usual approach taken under Barack Obama’s administration and I’d rather expected Biden to revert back to that. Instead, Blinken went so far as to threaten military retaliation if China took military action against the Philippines either on land or against any of that country’s shipping interests.

We’ve had a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines since 1951, though we’ve fortunately never reached the point of having to go to war over it. Kudos to Joe Biden for honoring that commitment. Of course, now we’re faced with the specter of two of the world’s largest military powers threatening the prospect of armed conflict.

At this point, China has effectively cemented its control over the Spratly Islands and the rest of the uninhabitable chunks of rock and coral that jut up out of the South China Sea. They’ve done so by constructing airstrips and docking facilities on top of them. It’s likely too late to do anything about that, but their more disturbing claim is that those islands grant them control of virtually all of the waters in the region. That’s one of the busiest straits in the world, and if China ever decided to try to shut down maritime traffic there, we could be in for a major showdown.

But would they? China’s grown increasingly aggressive in terms of saber-rattling, but moving toward actual warfare with the United States and our allies in that region would be insane. Further, they would be endangering their economic position and their control of international supply chains, many of which are already being looked at dubiously by much of the rest of the world. It’s also not considered very good strategy to open fire on a country that owes them as much money as we do. We might decide to stop making payments in that case.

This will hopefully turn out to be nothing more than some muscle-flexing for the international news audience. But keep an eye on the situation just in case.