Last week saw the 163rd anniversary of an event that changed the course of Asia-Pacific history. On July 14, 1853, Commodore Matthew C. Perry, with a squadron of four U.S. warships, landed at Kurihama in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture to deliver a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the shogunate. Japan was a country frozen in time, cut off from the rest of the world for over two centuries by its policy of isolation. Perry's letter demanded, under the implied threat of force, the opening of Japanese ports to trade and supply with the United States, establishment of a consulate and other concessions.

Perry's demonstration of force put Japan's defenselessness against modern military technology in stark relief and motivated a period of stunningly rapid Japanese economic, societal and military modernization and expansion. That trajectory also led an ascendant Japan into violent conflict with the United States in World War II, a history with worrying parallels today.

China, too, has been shocked by displays of U.S. military might into rapid military modernization paired with unprecedented economic growth. Today, the U.S. commonly describes China's military intentions as "opaque." China decries what it calls the U.S. pursuit of hegemony and a Cold War mindset. An appreciation for the last century's violent history in the Pacific — and the policies that drove it — may help both powers avoid repeating that history in this century.