Abstract
This paper explores the probable causes and consequences of an Asian Paradox or the highly incongruous structure of Asia within the broader international system: at once the engine of global economic growth while at the same time, the repository of all of the world’s outstanding security threats and challenges. Asia in the 21st century is going to be a key test bed of the commercial peace theory and whether the U.S.-China strategic rivalry will result in some type of a conflict. Attention is also paid to the potential consequences flowing from the end of Asia’s Meiji era or when all of Asia’s major powers and key middle powers have achieved or are well on their way of achieving what Japan accomplished by the late 1890s: a wealthy economy and a strong military. How an increasingly wealthy, technologically advanced, and a militarily sophisticated Asia decides to cope with numerous security dilemmas is Asia’s new Long March including the extent to which the region’s strategically consequential states are willing to preserve and to strengthen the prevailing liberal international order.
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