Washington's South Asia strategy ought to be shaped less by the memory of failure, and more by an under-rated success: the transformation of once conflict-ridden Southeast Asia into an oasis of peace and relative prosperity.

Yet his meetings with America’s top leaders, from President Obama on down, will be just as much a chance for Xi to size up the administration’s new policies toward Asia as they are an opportunity for U.S. officials to get a sense of whom they will be dealing with starting this fall.

Our declared interests in Asia keep growing, we ask PACOM to do what it can to advance them, but we starve them of resources to do the job. We are coming to a point where either we retrench from our commitments in Asia or we decide as a nation to properly fund them.

American policy makers need to recognize they're playing a different game from the Chinese and adjust their strategy. While shifting to billiards is too provocative for Washington, if trends continue, it may soon find itself behind the eight ball with few options for maintaining its stabilizing role in the region.

Slim's actions when he became British chief of staff were to shake up the system. He took over from Bernard Montgomery, who, true to form, used the occasion of the change of command to whine about things. Slim's response: "What have YOU done?!" A succinct but scathing indictment of the British system of leadership.

Today's budding U.S.-China security rivalry will shape the region's future and the future of the world.The United States needs to transform America's Asian alliances into an integrated, net-centric system.

As Washington braces for another $400 billion in defense spending cuts, the urge to find a strategic partner in Asia is gaining steam. In that search, India often seems like the dream option—almost by default.

The problem is that–as is plain to see – the Obama administration is not planning what Clinton describes as a strategic "pivot" from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific. It’s just retreating from the Middle East and reducing the U.S. military.