Is Asia More 'Worrisome' Than Europe?

Worry About Asia, Not Europe -- Rajan Menon, National Interest

Newspapers are now full of doom and gloom about Europe. A recent opinion piece in The New York Times even argued that “Europe”—the ideal of an integrated, prosperous, peaceable continent devoid of nationalism’s nasty variants—had failed outright.

Europe certainly has problems, among them massive unemployment, crushing debt, rising poverty, and resurgent xenophobic ideologies, parties and movements. But failure? Compared to what exactly?

Surely not the past. For five hundred years before 1945, Europe was the venue for horrific wars. World War I and II alone killed seventy million people. Extremist movements were ubiquitous. Noxious worldviews enabled horrors such as the Holocaust.

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My Comment: Economically .... I am more worried about Europe (and the U.S.) than Asia. But when it comes to national security .... I am more worried about Asia because I am of the belief that the next big war (and I mean a big war between major powers)) will start in Asia. Case in point .... if conventional war should break out on the Korean Peninsula, it would not surprise me if U.S. casualties in that type of war will quickly surpass U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined .... throw in crude nukes .... then casualty rates will skyrocket to unimaginable levels.