Speaking as an (Disclaimer!) American Chinese casual observer of the whole episode I think that this whole issue was a bit blown out of proportion by the media and that some of reporting is definitely spun/one sided. Although it is true that China has been the most effective in transforming undersea formations into usable islands, they were not the instigating party. I believe Vietnam was the first to start sending out military/ governmental personal to occupy islands in the SCS. NYT has a decent map showing this! . As you can see, yes China does do the majority of island building but I'm thinking this is more because Vietnam and Philipines already occupied the 'good ones' and in order to keep up with the joneses as you will, plus put to work some of its huge industrial oversupply, what better use than to stake out claims in an area where its neighbors were already doing so? Plus China is basically the only nation in that area that has the capability to build an island, Vietnam and the rest of the small nations just don't have the industrial capacity to do so. I'm not defending any nation though since all of those nations are outside of any 12 mile nautical border and geopolitics has no such thing as halfway actors. However there is definitely a 'side' if you will in most of the reporting that we as Americans get regarding this issue. From my memory, the only time where we even heard about this issue was when they did an expose on that beached Vietnam patrol craft a few years ago, and then suddenly a bit later instead of hearing about a wild dash for real estate in the SCS, we hear mostly about the Chinese island building, which to be fair is the most dramatic so although I am thankful to be aware of this news, I think that there is some definitely 'point the finger at China' instead of 'hey everybody in this region is doing this btw'. Going from here though, I do think that the resolution would be incredibly hard. We, (America), just don't have the sway we do in that region like we do in other areas (Namely ME, EU). Hell, we were at war with Vietnam pretty recently and now we're being nice to them again. I think the absolute ideal resolution would be a multinational administered force to police and guard the region to make sure everybody is playing by the rules and to make sure the huge economical bounty buried underneath that sea is being used in a fair way. This is obviously not going to happen, and I honestly think America is backing China in this stage, although in a roundabout way. Think about the goals for China: Establish legitimacy for having some military there to guard claims, along with convincing its people that the region is dangerous and that guarding this region only benefits Chinese. Looking at it like this, the FON patrols and Carrier navigations suddenly give the CCP a reason to escalate with missles and runways and fighter jets because of the American Navy threatening the Han heartland through its weak point in the S/SE quarter where a huge amount of trade is exposed along with the majority of the economic output of China. I think the Obama administration has already accepted the fact that China will be the regional hegemon within the next few decades and at this point is doing what he can to contain the expansion at least by land (TPP building economic partnerships, all those trips opening Vietnam to the West along with the rest of the nations in the 'pivot'). However by sea I don't think the Administration has an answer other than conceding that territory militarily (slowly) , but with the hopes that economically at least, there will be free access to all of the trade and resource extraction that might go on, which is why he's giving the Chinese reasons to arm the islands, but in return there's so much rhetoric about FON and free passage for trade. I'm thinking in a few years or a decade or so, the PLAN will grow to the point where a regional war is too expensive for the US Navy to win decisively and there will be a joint US/China treaty where the USN and the PLAN do joint patrols in some regions to calm the neighbors while economically, everybody plays on a generally even playing field, (except of course, US and Chinese natural resource extraction companies who will enjoy slight benefits). Basically, I don't think there's any way for the small SEA countries to 'win' in this stage short of forming some sort of NATO like SCS organization, which the US won't join since that's a huge escalation against China, but if they play it right, they can get their concerns and issues addressed in the inevitable US/China SCS treaty. Anyway, definitely looking for people to criticize this viewpoint. Thanks!