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East Asia and the Great Power Coalitions

By Richard H. Solomon
America and the World 1981
Article Summary and Author Biography

For more than three decades East Asia has had its share of buffeting by the rivalry of the great powers. The region has been the site of America's two most recent wars--in Korea and Vietnam--which reflected the interplay between local conflicts and efforts of the Soviet Union, China, and the United States to safeguard vulnerable frontiers, establish alliances with which to countervail the expansion of rivals' influence, and secure the interests of allied states.

Richard H. Solomon directs The Rand Corporation's research program on International Security Policy issues. He previously served on the staff of the National Security Council (1971-1976) with particular responsibility for Asian Affairs. His latest publications include Asian Security in the 1980s. He was also editor and a major contributor to a 1981 volume, The China Factor: Sino-American Relations and the Global Scene.

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For more than three decades East Asia has had its share of buffeting by the rivalry of the great powers. The region has been the site of America's two most recent wars-in Korea and Vietnam-which reflected the interplay between local conflicts and efforts of the Soviet Union, China, and the United States to safeguard vulnerable frontiers, establish alliances with which to countervail the expansion of rivals' influence, and secure the interests of allied states.

The U.S. position in East Asia, since the early 1950s, has been based on a core of stable alliance relationships with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and the ANZUS states of Australia and New Zealand. These ties have been strengthened in recent years by the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) and by positive if informal dealings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the economic development-oriented regional grouping composed of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

This varied coalition has drawn its limited cohesion from a combination of the economic dynamics of the market-economy states, and a shared concern with the growth of Soviet military power in the region-either directly as in Moscow's buildup along the Sino-Soviet frontier, the garrisoning of the northern territories (claimed by Japan) which began in 1978, the expansion of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, and the 1980 occupation of Afghanistan, or indirectly through Moscow's support for Vietnam's 1979 invasion of Kampuchea (Cambodia). It is a loose entente which has given the United States some promise of countervailing the forceful expansion of Soviet influence and presenting Moscow with an inhospitable Asian frontier which would weigh heavily in its consideration of adventures in other parts of the world. It has required the Soviet Union to view East Asia as an insecure region in which its access is limited to bilateral alliances with Mongolia and Vietnam and an uncertain relationship with North Korea, supplemented by ties to India and Afghanistan in South and Southwest Asia.

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