OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT:

Carter's comments, delivered at a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, came at the close of a trip to Asia, where he cruised on a U.S. aircraft carrier operating in the South China Sea and blamed Beijing's island-building for rising tensions in the region.

In October, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Lassen, challenged territorial limits around one of China's man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago with a so-called freedom-of-navigation patrol.

"We've done them before, all over the world," Carter said, in reference to the operation. "And we will do them again."

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