In a recent editorial, the New York Times accuses China of “playing chicken” in the South China Sea, which as Benjamin Reynolds argues, dramatically inflates the threat that China poses to the region and the United States. The critique is not militarism, threatening behavior, or the revision of international norms as such. Rather, the narrative outlined by the Times is the standard hawkish U.S. narrative about China and the South China Sea, which have preceded invasions in Vietnam, Iraq, and bombing in Libya, too.

With the US picking and choosing what parts of customary international law it embraces, the FON operations are clearly exercises of hegemonic power projection so as to establish a US-dominated maritime legal order beyond a world ocean legal order guaranteed under UNCLOS. As for the FON operations conducted in the South China Sea, they are no more than a tool to carry out the US “Pivot to Asia” strategy.

China has warned the Group of Seven (G7) countries against engaging in talks that might worsen tensions in the South China Sea, as leaders of the seven economic powers meet in Japan.

U.S.-China relations are too important for the people of the two nations and for the world. At this point, protecting U.S.-China relations must be the first priority. It is time for the two countries to rethink and re-evaluate, with urgency, the issues involved.

World leaders meet in Japan this week for talks that will encompass the slowing Chinese economy and China’s reclamation of land in the disputed South China Sea -- without any representatives from Asia’s largest economy at the table.

U.S. President Barack Obama called for the "peaceful resolution" of disputes in the South China Sea in a speech in Hanoi.

The recent U.S. reconnaissance activities in South China Sea raises the question if another collision is looming in the air. After examining the existing international conventions and laws regarding airspace and maritime encounters, the author argues that the key to preventing another collision is for the U.S. to stop close-in reconnaissance operations near China’s waters.

Despite western press fearing the next Philippine president as a “strongman,” President Duterte won the majority of votes from an election with a record 82 percent turnout. For the first time, Philippines is poised to have its first president who is a self-declared socialist, and who wants to hedge bets between U.S. security assurance and Chinese economic cooperation.

Whereas aircraft carriers have long provided the U.S. naval primacy as floating islands, China is creating its own artificial islands, complete with deep channels, harbors, berthing areas and airfields, all manned by thousands of troops, to counter that primacy. The consequences of a military clash could easily be disastrous and must be avoided. The politics of keeping the overall U.S.-China relationship on track is a particular challenge in the U.S. during a presidential election year, when candidates are posturing to an unexpectedly populist electorate.

The arbitration tribunal has put its own authority in question by redefining the case against China put before it by the Philippines. All nations should be concerned about what would become of China’s maritime entitlements in the South China Sea if we let UNCLOS serve as the sole exclusionary source of such entitlements.