Japan And The Pacific Region [antikvár]

FOREWORD The economic and political developments in the wake of World War II turned the limelight for decades on countries around the Atlantic, or more precisely on the United States cind Western Europe, on the one hand, and on the Soviet Union and other European socialist countries, on the other. Behind this Atlantic way of looking at things lay first of all a politiccil and military tension between two social systems even though it could be kept on a cold war level. A further reason was a substantial economic rivalry related with political factors: the United States was rendering significant assistance towards the reconstruction and strengthening of Western Europe, while socialist countries were making an effort to make up for their backwardness due to the legacies of economic history, eind to catch up with highly developed capitalist countries. From the second half of the sixties the image of both v/orld politics and world economy has become multi-coloured, Leaving for the moment facts and events pertaining to the so-called third world out of sight, one could observe Western Europe's second "coming of age" and, to a certain extent, its ambition to become more independent from the United States. At the same time Japan, previously an "unnoticed" member of the western alliance, was acquiring prestige for herself by her fast economic growth. In this Japein was soon followed by economies like that of South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and later by some South-East Asian countries. The tensions in Sino-Soviet relations that have de-