East Asia: Another Year of Living Dangerously

The major events of 1983 in East Asian politics and economics can be looked at from three broad vantage points or planes of abstraction. At the most general level one sees, rather like the movements of tectonic plates on the earth's surface, a slight shift in the center of gravity of U.S. foreign policy from Europe toward Asia. In large part this shift is prompted by a growing realization among the leaders of the United States and Japan that their nations will, for the indefinite future, be paramount in the fundamental sciences and their practical offshoots in microelectronics, biotechnology, fine