Commentary: Washington's anxieties in Asia-Pacific region

In recent days, Washington seems to be agonizing over the colorful rhetoric of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, while its "pivot to Asia" policy faces even more uncertainties.

The United States believes that it has some sort of natural rights to write what outgoing President Barack Obama called "the rules of the road" for the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, it wants all nations in the region to observe that same playbook.

Yet without obedient partnerships underpinned by strong economic, military and security cooperation, America's such geopolitical arrangement could go nowhere.

In recent months, Washington has been troubled by a sense of worry.

Since Duterte took office in late June, the new leader in Manila has kept flashing out signals that have perplexed the Americans, if not enraging them. Perhaps the U.S. leaders have now begun to miss the "good old days" when former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III was in power.

Now that the Philippines has vowed to send all foreign troops home, including the U.S. forces stationed in the Southeastern Asian country, many are wondering how far Manila would go to push forward its independent foreign policy.

While the Philippines seems to be pivoting away, the bleak picture for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact has also raised qualms of America's allies in the region about Washington's determination and ability to close the deal.

The TPP is the economic magnet Washington tries to use to pull its regional partners together and to bolster its economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific. Its failure to be materialized, which now seems very likely, would sink the re-balance to Asia strategy deep down into the waves of the Pacific.

Though Beijing has repeatedly promised to seek peaceful development, the suspicious and stubborn Washington still tries to counterbalance it.

In his recent article published in the Foreign Affairs magazine, Ashton Carter, U.S. defense chief, criticized Beijing for being "out of step with where the Asia-Pacific wants to go."

Considering America's intention to call the shots in the region, the secretary could probably really mean "where Washington wants to go."

The rapprochement between Beijing and Manila has gotten on the nerves of the U.S. government. That may explain why U.S. Navy destroyer Decatur intruded earlier this month the waters of China's Xisha Islands in the South China Sea.

At the very root of Washington's growing solicitude are its self-serving and arrogant ambition to maintain global hegemony and worries that its days of being the world's only superpower are in a ticking countdown.

If the United States wants to get rid of the anxieties, it has to find its rightful place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world, and starts to act more constructively, not coercively. Obsession with the vain dream of building a long-lasting global empire could ultimately turn its nightmares into reality. Endi