India, Jan. 25 -- For much of the first quarter of the 21st century, American policymakers treated China as an economic phenomenon to be managed rather than a systemic competitor to be challenged and stopped. The result was not only China's inexorable rise, but America's decline in the foreign policy arena. Washington was effectively comatose until 2017, while Beijing was cunningly executing a strategy designed to achieve its long-term foreign policy objectives, with what amounted to a wink and nod from the Americans. One need look no further than China's expropriation of the Spratly Islands, de facto expropriation of territory in the Philippines' territorial waters, and the execution of the Belt and Road Initiative to see this. Beijing a...