Atlanta coined the catchphrase that it was the city that was “too busy to hate”. During the past 30 years, the countries of Asia have informally adopted that slogan and transferred it to a whole continent. Since the end of the 1970s, the biggest Asian nations have forgotten about fighting each other – and concentrated on the serious business of getting rich. The results have been spectacular. But there are alarming signs that east Asia’s giants are pursuing dangerous new priorities, and diverting their energy into angry nationalism and territorial disputes.
The rise in tensions in the region is so palpable that senior political figures are sounding the alarm. A few days ago, at the Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity, I heard Yun Byung-se, South Korea’s foreign minister, warn that the increase in tensions in Asia means “it looks like Pandora’s box is being opened”.
To make his case, Mr Yun listed an alarming spate of incidents in the past month: a near collision between Chinese fighter jets and a Japanese surveillance aircraft, “the first such incident in recent history”; a physical confrontation between Vietnamese and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, the first since the two nations went to war in 1979; North Korea firing shells at a South Korean ship and threatening a fourth nuclear test, “in a way nobody has ever imagined”.