China and the Philippines blamed one another for the incident, the latest in a series of high-seas confrontations since last year. Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been locked in the decades-long territorial conflicts. The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of security alliances in Asia as a countermeasure against an increasingly assertive China. That has dovetailed with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’s efforts to boost his country’s territorial defense. Beijing has opposed Washington’s alliance-building and has repeatedly vowed to defend its territorial interests at all costs. Is Washington the instigator of wars ?