Ill historical assertions

The close economic bond did not prevent Germany and the United Kingdom from going to war. So, despite being responsible for the current impasse between China and Japan and pressing ahead with his anti-China stunts, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made an unctuous appeal for the two countries to avoid a similar scenario.

Former US Defense Department official Joseph Bosco has warned that, without a "big red line" drawn for Beijing, policy ambiguity may lead to the same kind of miscalculation that triggered the Korean War in 1950.

The most outlandish analogy, however, has come from Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. In his desperation to seek international support for his government's territorial claims against China, Aquino drew a vicious parallel with the West's failure to back Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany's demand for Sudetenland in 1938.