Aquino thought that China’s territorial disputes with our country is like Nazi Germany’s disputes with Czechoslovakia over the latter’s areas populated with ethnic Germans. For Aquino, the South China Sea is this century’s Sudetenland: if China gets to do what it wants, Aquino surmised, the world would face another Nazi Germany. The problem with the Sudetenland = South China Sea analogy is its lack of understanding of the South China Sea’s significance to China. Just like any form of historical thinking, historical analogies are supposed to help us understand the present by way of relating it to what happened in the past. In the case of historical analogues, the analogue (the past event) is used to shed light on the target. The analogy being lifted from European history rather than from China’s own history is the reason why its allure only produced a dull glint.

Sasot, S. R. (2017, May 23). Why China will go to war for the South China Sea. The Manila Times, p. A6.