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learn: perhaps the surrounding situations are so much larger than the people running the show that no matter how well lessons are learned, no positive action can be taken, except waiting for the next upswing in the business cycle.
I sincerely hope that such a depressing thought is not true. In this, the last year of a brutally violent century, the last century of a brutally violent millennium, we can hope that people will learn from the lessons of their past (both ancient, historic, and recent). We can also hope that of these lessons, the most important one to learn is that a leader, a people, a nation, is never trapped in a set of bad choices, never truly caught between a rock and a hard place. New choices and paths must be carved, out of the rock if necessary, in order to liberate the minds and bodies of the two billion people living, struggling, dying, and being reborn in East Asia.
George Santayana famously said that those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it. But study is not enough. Understanding is a level past study, and application is one more step. Even further along the road is application for good reason, good purpose, and to good ends. East Asia has a long way to go even to take Santayana's advice. But much progress can be made in a year. At the very least, as the Chinese proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Hopefully, 1999 will be the year for East Asian politics to take that step, and many more.
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