Abstract
Michael R. Auslin, a former History Professor at Yale University, is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., USA. In his recent publication, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region, Auslin maintains the view that while Asia seems to be a dynamic and peaceful region, the continent is actually riddled with various unseen threats ranging from economic stagnation to political unrest and growing military tensions. He writes that the intent behind this book was to relate America‘s future with a resurgent Indo-Pacific (a variant of the former United States Secretary of State (2009-13) Hillary Clinton‘s proposed ‗America‘s Pacific Century‘), but instead he came across extensive risks in Asia that are completely ignored by the West. Through the creation of ‗risk maps‘ and identification of ‗risk regions‘, Auslin tries to explore the factors that threaten Asia‘s future and put at risk the very imagined, ‗Asian Century‘ (p. 09). Overall, Auslin regards China central to all the problems, primarily related to the economy and security in the region. Regarding terminology, the author believes that the traditional definition of Asia needs to be expanded (p. 11), for which, out of terms like Asia, Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific, he has extensively used the latter.