We must now reckon with the more likely prospects for the Asia-Pacific region in the first decades of the twenty-first century, recalling that historians are unqualified by trade to offer any but amateur readings of the international horoscope. Their efforts at divination run the risk of assuming that the recent past is necessarily prologue, and they can all too easily discount the likelihood of sharp caesuras over the next generation. Predictions based merely on the continuation of comforting trends may soon be fit only for pulping. While doctors are said to be able to bury their mistakes, contemporary historians and political scientists have little choice but to live with theirs. The list is long indeed of distinguished individuals who suggested before the fall of the Berlin Wall that the Soviet Union would be able to cope with the unpleasant choices of guns or vodka.