On the heel of these remarks, officials from the Department of Defense and United States Pacific Command also stepped up with the warning that the U.S. would come to the aid of its ally, the Philippines, in the event of an attack by China should their territorial spar escalate. During a February speech in San Diego, U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Harry Harris criticized China's creation of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea as "a unilateral attempt to change the status quo."

These harangues betray the U.S.'s judgmental mindset and underlying motive to suppress China by throwing its weight behind the other countries contending for territorial rights in the South China Sea. Such attempts do not ameliorate but rather intensify tensions in the region, further stoking fears of military confrontations between the world's largest developed and developing countries.

As neither an interested party in the South China Sea nor a signatory country of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the U.S. has no grounds for meddling in the issue. But the U.S. has long prioritized domestic laws over international laws on maritime security and sea border demarcation. Alerted by a rising Asian power, the U.S. navy and air force have since the late 1990s carried out close reconnaissance of the Chinese coast, so constituting one of the main factors of instability in the East Asia seas. Its military ships and planes regularly make intrusions into China's exclusive economic zone to spy on China's navy and air force. Underlying such acts are a deep distrust of China and a containment strategy stemming from concerns that the Asian country's rise will challenge U.S. world hegemony.

Political maneuvers and diplomatic meddling by the U.S., motivated by its hegemonic interests have made the South China Sea issue a potential powder keg in East Asian regional security. Safeguarding free navigation in the region is merely a pretext by the U.S. to arrest the build-up of China's naval strength. Once it legitimately occupies the South China Sea islands in question, China might extend its strategic force further southward, so posing a perceived threat to the air and maritime predominance of the U.S. in the West Pacific. This prospect is the real reason why the U.S. has recently added its presence and voice to South China Sea disputes.

After the end of the Cold War, the United States began curtailing its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1992 it shut down in rapid succession its Subic Bay naval base and Clark Air Base in the Philippines. Both had served as important military hubs for the U.S. to carry out military interference in Southeast Asian affairs during the Vietnam War. The two bases were also strategically important as a main military presence in the South China Sea after WWII. However, after the Soviet Union disintegrated, Russia withdrew its troops from Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay. The successful sub-region organization ASEAN also began to play an active role in advancing cooperation among countries in Southeast Asia. The U.S. hence concluded that the South China Sea was no longer a hot spot for contention within Asia-Pacific geostrategy. For some time the U.S. adopted a stance of non-involvement and non-intervention in sovereignty disputes among China, China's Taiwan and certain ASEAN countries. This was based on the U.S.'s evaluation of China's naval and air force power which led to the conclusion that the Chinese army lacked the capacity to reach beyond its coastal waters.

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