As President Barack Obama prepares for his trip to Asia this week, he will face questions not just about the administration's signature rebalance, or "pivot" toward that region, but also about the crisis in Ukraine. The leaders Obama will meet in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines will be preoccupied with what appears to them as a potential Asian parallel to the challenge Europe faces: How can the United States and its friends and allies deal with an increasingly assertive regional power? Put more bluntly -- as the leaders will surely do in their private talks with Obama -- how would the United States respond if China should resort to unilateral territorial intervention in their own backyard?
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