United States Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said recently that the Diaoyu Islands are under Japanese administration and fall within the scope of the US-Japan security treaty. As Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai said in response, by meddling in the Diaoyu Islands dispute, Washington actually "drops a stone on its feet", says an article in People's Daily. Excerpts:

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been trying to maintain the global balance of power. Its interference in the troubled waters of the Diaoyu Islands is part of such efforts to keep a rising China in check and maintain its regional dominance, but it will actually backfire.

Tokyo has demonstrated a blatant attempt to deny and whitewash Japan's history of aggression, seen from the recent visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors World War II war criminals, and the relentless efforts to revise the country's pacifist constitution.

These are the signs of militarism rearing its head in Japan, and the US cannot absolve itself from blame for that. Japan's moves to challenge the postwar international order are part of the consequences of the historical failure to root out the revival of militarism from its soil, for which the US should be held accountable, as it loosened its grip on Japan and took Tokyo as a strategic ally to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Although Abe's previous visit to the US failed to secure explicit words of support, the US has more than once claimed that the US-Japan security treaty is applicable to the Diaoyu Islands, and this encourages the Japanese government and right-wing activists in the territorial row with Beijing. Obviously, the US has underestimated the impact of right-wing politics on regional stability and has meanwhile overestimated its own capability to manipulate the regional tension for its own good.