Will Europe's past be Asia's future?

For the first time in the modern era, Asia is emerging as a distinct regional state system - a cluster of strong, prosperous, independent nations dealing intensively and continuously with one another in diplomatic, strategic and economic matters. Prior to the nineteenth century, geography and technology combined to keep these Asian interactions at a comparatively low level. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the region was largely dominated by outside imperial powers, then divided by the Cold War. As the twenty-first century begins, Asia will take its place alongside Europe and North America as a leading centre of wealth and power. As this happens, the overriding strategic question concerns the nature of relations among these states. Is Asia, like Europe before it, destined to endure an interval of interstate rivalry and, perhaps, war? Or will the Asian states move directly to a protracted period of peace, prosperity and stability?