The United States, Japan, and the Emerging East Asian Order

Abstract

he nations of East Asia and North America have come to constitute a new international order. At the core of this order are Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Pacific ministates, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and the two city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong. Because the nations are so varied, however, identification among them is weak and regional cooperation suffers. At the periphery of this order are the Asian Socialist states of the People's Republic of China (prc), North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam, which includes Laos and Kampuchea. Relations among these states are dominated, for the most part, by balance-ofpower considerations, and their relations with the core states of the East Asian international order have been adversarial, although this is beginning to change. Most core states have established at least informal relations with China and the Soviet Union; for instance, Thailand uses its ties with China to contain Vietnam, and South Korea has considered outflanking North Korea by offering support to the Soviet Union in developing Siberia. Even though the security relations in East Asia are far from resolved, and balance-of-power considerations still very much in evidence, security systems have not emerged as a principal concern for these nations, which, for the most part, have been content to fend for themselves or, at best, to enter into bilateral security treaties. These arrangements have sufficed. In fact, they have failed to protect the parties involved on only one occasion, when the Chinese invaded Vietnam, which had signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union.