In remarks that carried a barely veiled swipe at China, US Vice-President Mike Pence told leaders of Southeast Asian nations in Singapore on Thursday that "empire and aggression have no place" in the region.

Yet in referring to it as "the Indo-Pacific" at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders, he once again showed that is what the United States is bringing to the Asia-Pacific.

Yet his bid to pit China against its Asia-Pacific neighbors will find no takers, because it was so out of sync with what the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit and its related meetings were focusing on — enhanced trade, and peace and security in the region.

Talks on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership - which would create the world's largest trade bloc - continued to make progress this week and the negotiations are expected to be concluded next year.

And while Pence intimated that China was a hostile presence in the region - a threat to both sovereignty and values - his view was at odds with both the views of leaders in the region and with the reality.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said at the summit that relations between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors were "excellent". And despite the maritime territorial disputes that exist between China and some of the ASEAN members, the two sides have agreed to finalize a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea in three years to maintain peace and security in the region.

Indeed, the ASEAN meetings in Singapore have highlighted who the real troublemaker is, as, on his way from Tokyo to Singapore, the US vice-president saw fit to conduct a so-called freedom of navigation mission by flying some 30 kilometers from Chinese islands in the South China Sea. These contentious military maneuvers merely create the risk of an incident and serve to show how ubiquitous and provocative the US military presence is in the region even though there is no threat to its interests.

If you take away the cause, the effects cease.

The US administration's "America first" policies are antithetical to the concerted efforts of countries in the region to uphold the common good through greater integration, free trade and dialogue.

And its world-is-ours mindset may help people better understand where Pence's "aggression and empire" remark was coming from.