THE RISE OF ASIA'S MILITARIES
For 200 years, the world has been shaped by Western military dominance. Gunboats were replaced by battleships as agents of national power, which in turn were replaced by cruise missiles and stealth bombers. Until recently, these weapons belonged exclusively to Europeans or North Americans. But this monopoly on advanced military technologies is now ending. Ballistic missiles carrying conventional warheads or weapons of mass destruction (WMD), along with other cutting-edge technologies, are now within reach of as many as ten Asian nations from Israel to North Korea -- a major shift in the world's balance of power.
The rise of Asian military power heralds the beginning of a second nuclear age as different from the first, that of the Cold War, as that contest was from World War II. The world that the West created is being challenged -- not just in military ways but in cultural
Loading, please wait...