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Introduction: The New Politics of the Pacific
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20405 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1992 |
718 Words |
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Although no one would deny the signal importance of the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, an equally critical result of the ending of the Cold War has been the creation of a new politics in the Pacific Rim. No longer bound by a once necessary strategic policy of containment, dynamic Asian nations like Japan, Korea, and even China are asserting themselves in increasingly independent ways.
This month's special report, "The New Politics of the Pacific," is led off brilliantly by Martin Lasater of Pennsylvania State University, who proposes that the United States adopt a "strategy of integration." The strategy would maintain adequate security and deterrence arrangements within the area (something all Asian nations, including Japan, want); (2) expedite the integration of socialist countries, like China, into the global economy; and (3) enable the United States to take full economic and political advantage of what Lasater sees as the coming "Pacific Century."
By implementing such a strategy, argues Lasater, the United States can play a unique role as an "honest broker," while also serving as a facilitator and protector of the process of integration.
Ronald A. Morse, a leading Japan specialist, believes that Japan will take an increasingly active and positive leadership role in Asia and around the world. Among its specific goals are increased contributions to burden sharing, supporting the development of multilateral Asian security framework along the lines of NATO, assisting Korean unification, Vietnam's recovery, and keeping the Philippines solvent.
The one issue that is hardest to evaluate, concedes Morse, is the ability of Japan's political elite to articulate an ideology that will reassure Asians and others it will use its power for peaceful and constructive ends.
Despite the dark memory of Tiananmen Square, Donald W. Klein of Tufts University asserts that China now finds itself in better shape than at any other time in the last 150 years. It is no longer militarily threatened, as the result of the Cold War's ending, and it has benefited significantly from the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping over the last decade.
Regardless of the uncertain future, concludes Allen S. Whiting of Arizona State University, the very recent past suggests that a genuine turning point has arrived in the
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