The Obama administration’s worldview is still emerging, but its policies toward Russia and China are already revealing. Its Russia policy consists of trying to accommodate Moscow’s sense of global entitlement. So far that has meant ignoring the Russian forces in Georgian territory, negotiating arms-control agreements that Moscow needs more than Washington does and acquiescing to Russian objections to new NATO installations in former Warsaw Pact countries.

With China, the administration approach dubbed “strategic reassurance” aims to convince the Chinese that the United States has no intention of containing their rising power. As with the Russia “reset,” the policy is bound to make American allies nervous.

In the last decade, China has used its growing wealth to build a stronger military. As its military power has grown, so have its ambitions, especially its naval ambitions. Recently, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that China’s military modernization program could undermine U.S. military power in the Pacific.

It is hardly surprising that China wants to supplant U.S. power in the region. To the Chinese, the reign of “the middle kingdom” is the natural state of affairs and the past 200 years of Western dominance an aberration.

What is surprising is the Obama administration’s apparent willingness to accommodate these ambitions. This worries U.S. allies from New Delhi to Seoul.

For decades, U.S. strategy toward China has had two elements. The first was to bring China into the “family of nations” through engagement. The second was to make sure China did not become too dominant. The Clinton administration pushed for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization but also strengthened the U.S. military alliance with Japan. The Bush administration fostered close economic ties with China, but also enhanced relations with India, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam.

“Strategic reassurance” seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century. But the British accommodation of America’s rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world — as proved true throughout the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance between an autocratic China and a democratic United States.

Unfortunately, the only result of “strategic reassurance” will be to make American allies nervous. For an administration that has announced “we are back” after years of alleged U.S. neglect of Asia, this is not an auspicious beginning.

(Kagan is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dan Blumenthal is a fellow in Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay first appeared in the Washington Post.)