Tensions in the South China Sea have been on the rise following a number of incidents at sea and tough rhetoric among the claimants to the sea's waters and islands.

The South China Sea row highlights how much influence ASEAN has lost compared with Beijing.

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.

Any prudent U.S. policy would recognize that abandoning Taiwan is highly unlikely to lead to greater stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

Recent Chinese offensives make the hope that China's emergence as a global power will be peaceful and responsible look increasingly naive, and the Obama administration cannot afford to respond to Chinese hostility with a passive approach.

The U.S. Navy will have to face new challenges from China and North Korea with fewer resources.

There are five broad trends leading to greater instability in the South China Sea in the coming years. These are the failure of UNCLOS--or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea--a weakening of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), China's evolving South China Sea policy, Southeast Asian military modernization, and a hollowing out of the U.S. military.

The furor over the collision of an American reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 flight aircraft brings the past and present realities of our relationship with China into sharp focus.