The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.
The challenge to Asia is to discard the dry, meatless bone of mysticism and fatalism.
The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia.
Indonesia is hardly immune to catastrophic breakdowns, as the anti-Communist pogrom showed. But, like India, it has been relatively fortunate in evolving a mode of politics that can include many discontinuities - of class, region, ethnicity, and religion.
Some folks hesitate to seize additional strength because they think it wrong or dangerous to be a powerful individual. Somehow they have acquired the false notion that tyranny or dictatorship or cruelty are the outcomes of a powerful personality. These characteristics are not power. They are weaknesses disguised as power.
Prudence dictates that there should be a balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
Pakistan is riddled with problems that are rooted in the disproportionate power of the state. Aid has only boosted that power.
I think a major cause of present Asian economic difficulties that mainly come from, you know, lack of market economy.