Courting greater U.S.-India cooperation on common areas of concern, including China, the Obama administration reiterated Washington’s support for India’s bid for a permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council and growing voting shares within Bretton Woods Institutions. Furthermore, and perhaps most crucially, Obama upgraded bilateral ties with India in the realm of civilian nuclear technology and advanced military procurements. More than ever, India is distancing itself from its age-old “non-alignment” mindset in favor of a closer strategic partnership with the U.S. and its key allies such as Japan.

Overall, it is clear that China is determined to forge ahead with its controversial construction activities across contested waters, encouraging peripheral states to also ramp up their defense and diplomatic posturing. It is increasingly unlikely China is open to compromise. Swiftly and surely, China is eviscerating every ounce of diplomatic goodwill it studiously generated in late-2014, when President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang so energetically courted the broader Asia-Pacific neighborhood and sought to convince everyone of China’s supposedly peaceful rise.

Richard Javad Heydarian is an Assistant Professor in international affairs and political science at De La Salle University, and a policy advisor at the Philippine House of Representatives. As a specialist on Asian geopolitics and economic affairs, he has written for or interviewed by Al Jazeera, Asia Times, BBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Diplomat, The National Interest, and USA TODAY, among other leading international publications. He is the author of How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings (Zed, London), and the forthcoming book The Philippines: The US, China, and the Struggle for Asia’s Pivot State (Zed, 2015). You can follow him on Twitter:@Richeydarian.