ABSTRACT
The end of the cold war has revolutionalized the politics of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union but has had remarkably little impact so far on the political landscape of East Asia. On balance the strategic trends in East Asia seem to be reasonably favorable for peace and stability. Bilateralism has been the dominant international relationship in Asia since the colonial era. At the end of 1990, six national and regional trends that will be crucial in shaping the strategic environment are discerned. They are the Soviet peace offensive, China's domestic crises, the US strategic review and likely military drawdown, Japan's enhanced role, the localization of regional conflicts, and the primacy of economics and regionalism. The deepening of Sino-Soviet conflicts in the 1960s and the related Sino-American rapprochement caused the bipolar system initially to turn into a Strategic Triangle among three nuclear powers during the 1970s and then into a loose rectangle among four powers, including Japan, during the 1980s.
