Uncertainties concerning the nature of the emerging international order are nowhere greater than in the vast region of the Asia-Pacific. Prognoses concerning the political future range from expectations that economic growth will bring democratization, respect for human rights and peace, to forebodings that latent historical animosities, cultural cleavages, demographic and ecological pressures, and the rivalries and arms races characteristic of changing power balances foreshadow a turbulent future--and quite possibly, a disastrous one.
The optimism of economists on the prospects for continuing growth is at odds with the pessimism with which strategists contemplate potential security threats, but the tensions between these two approaches are for the most part addressed quite perfunctorily. What is needed is not only to link these dimensions, but to place them in a broader political setting. The more imaginative and challenging attempts to do this, like the "clash of civilizations" thesis with its alarming implications, are often marred by Western ethnocentrism. This is true of a recent broad-ranging survey, in many ways illuminating, by Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, writing in Survival, the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The assumptions made and the conclusions reached by these two European authors bear close examination, for they help clarify the problems involved in contemplating the region's future.
A Pessimistic Reading
