The product of a symposium held in October 1978, all the essays are of high caliber, particularly those of Marius Jansen on Japan and Richard L. Park on India. Park suggests that "neither Pakistan nor India can be pleased with the strategic implications of the new U.S.S.R.-oriented government in Afghanistan since the coup of 1978, or with the potential for disorder in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier area of Pakistan, now exacerbated by impending civil war in Iran." External conflicts near or on the South Asian borders to the northwest, he predicts, "will tend to draw India and Pakistan together. . . ."