PRAGUE -- It is tempting for Europeans to project their own history onto Asia and to view current developments there as a mere repetition, if not an imitation, of what occurred in Europe. In fact, Asians encourage this temptation, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) openly aiming to become increasingly like the European Union.
In trying to decipher Asia's diplomatic future, Europeans are confronted, so to speak, with an "embarrassment of riches." Is Asia today replaying the balance of power games of late 19th-century Europe, with China in the role of Germany? Or is South Asia, through the growth of ASEAN, poised to one day become the Far Eastern equivalent of the EU?
These comparisons are not neutral, and one may detect in the analogy between China today and 19th-century Germany an element of that guilty pleasure in others' troubles that the Germans call "Schadenfreude." Asia may be doing well economically now, according to this view, but just wait: Rising nationalism, China's appetite for power, and the rest of Asia's desire to curb its ambitions will necessarily impede economic growth and restore the West's global primacy.
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