US turning Asia-Pacific into powder keg

Like before, the United States used this year's Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore over the weekend, as a platform to vilify China and promote discord in Asia, with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivering a speech hyping up a "China threat".

But in claiming that China's "aggression" needed to be deterred, and detailing the US' moves to do so, Hegseth only exacerbated the region's unease at his assertion the US "is back". His long list of the ways in which the US is militarizing the region does not accord with the region's "vision of peace and stability, of prosperity and security", as he claimed.

That vision is one founded on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which were born in Asia, and which are completely at odds with the hegemonic practices of the US.