The commander of the US Pacific Fleet has hit out at China’s “revanchist tendencies” and warned that Asia-Pacific nations must forsake “unilateral actions and inflammatory rhetoric” or risk stumbling into a Crimea-like crisis that would damage the global economy.

Speaking at a security conference in Jakarta yesterday, Admiral Harry Harris warned that “the prosperity of all our nations” depended on countries resolving the region’s maritime disputes through multilateral talks.

“Just consider the current global tensions caused by one neighbour against another in the Crimean peninsula,” he told delegates including senior military officials from China, Japan and several southeast Asian nations. “It’s imperative for every nation represented here today that we keep something like that from ever happening in this region of the world.”