Asserting that it will continue to play a "strong role" in the strategic Asia-Pacific, the US has said the peace it "underwrote" in the region has allowed China and India to rise.
"Look at what the US has brought to the Asia-Pacific region over last 70 years, the most rapidly growing region economically in the world," US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter told a Washington audience.
"It's been the peace and stability there that we underwrote that's allowed first Japan to rise, then South Korea, then Taiwan, then Southeast Asia, now China and India. That's what we've stood for and they've benefited from that," he asserted.
"So to disrupt the security environment where half of humanity lives and half of humanity's economic behaviour is not a good idea on their part, but certainly for our part, we intend to continue our strong role there," he said yesterday, responding to a question on the recent assertive behaviour of China in the South China Sea.
The US, he argued, is going to keep doing what it has always done for 70 years.
"We're going to fly and sail and operate where international law permits, period. And we demonstrate that and that won't stop," he said.
The South China Sea is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways.
China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use.
The US has criticised Beijing for building artificial islands in the disputed sea, and has flown a B-52 bomber and sailed a guided-missile destroyer near some of the constructions China has made in recent months.
Carter said the US is also making investments in its defence budget that are specifically oriented towards the checking the development of the Chinese military.
Also the recent Chinese behaviour has made other nations in the region concerned, he said.
"All around the region, people are reacting. The Chinese are, with this kind of stuff, going to get people to react and compensate. But more importantly, it's self-isolating behaviour," he added.
"I don't know when they'll realise that, whether they will realise that, but it's not the American approach to have a cold war there, to carve up the region, to divide. We're not trying to stop the Chinese from doing what they're doing," Carter said.
