Author: Dora Alves

Publisher: University Press of the Pacific

Published: 2002-04-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780898758382

These selected papers from National Defense University?s 1990 Pacific Symposium deal with events in a vast area stretching from Japan to New Zealand and from Southeast Asia to the South Pacific islands in a year of momentous change. The apt theme of "change, interdependence, and security" echoes throughout the papers. Two thoughtful considerations of long-term US policy in the region lead off the collection, arguing that the United States needs to maintain the course of its fundamental policy. Successive papers address major issues by country and subregion. For example, one study looks at future relations between China and the great powers after the Tiananmen incident. Other essays raise serious questions about US-Japan security and economic relations into the 21st century, and several specialists examine how the end of the Cold War has raised hopes for stability on the Korean Peninsula and throughout Northeast Asia. Shifting the focus to Southeast Asia, other papers discuss improved prospects for security after a Cambodian settlement, and the outlook for democracy in the Philippines. Rounding out the volume, several authors delve into the security situation in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific islands, as well as US and Soviet strategic interests there. Study of the Pacific - problematical in normal times because of the area?s vastness and diversity - has been further complicated recently by events in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Persian Gulf. This volume, like its parent symposium, provides a stable forum to continue assessing Pacific security despite increasingly unstable conditions elsewhere in the world. J. A. Baldwin Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy President, National Defense University