It has become something of a cliché to predict that Asia will dominate the twenty-first century. It is a safe prediction, given that Asia is already home to nearly 60% of the world's population and accounts for roughly 25% of global economic output. Asia is also the region where many of this century's most influential countries – including China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States – interact.
But to point to Asia's growing importance says nothing about its character. There can be two, very different Asian centuries, and the one that emerges will have profound consequences for the region's peoples and governments – and for the world.
One future is an Asia that is relatively familiar: a region whose economies continue to enjoy robust levels of growth and manage to avoid conflict with one another.
The second future could hardly be more different: an Asia of increased tensions, rising military budgets, and slower economic growth. Such tensions could spill over and impede trade, tourism, and investment, especially if incidents occur between rival air or naval forces operating in close proximity over or around disputed waters and territories. Cyberspace is another domain in which competition could get out of hand.
The question is this: Will twenty-first-century Asia resemble Europe – the dominant region of much of modern history – during the first half of the twentieth century, when it experienced two wars of unprecedented cost and destruction, or the second half, when tensions with the Soviet Union were effectively managed and Western Europe experienced unprecedented peace and prosperity?