ABSTRACT
An interesting conjuncture has taken place during this momentous decade of the 1980s. On the one hand, western commentators and analysts are grudgingly becoming more and more aware that the Pacific rim, particularly the East Asian countries, is the most economically dynamic if not aggressive region. If, at the beginning of the decade, American Department of State officials and other public figures were praising “our Japanese ally,” today I would judge the tone to be a more apprehensive and defensive one; the cover of a recent issue of The Economist depicting Japan as a huge sumo wrestler is symptomatic of a “Japan bashing” that is unfortunately not that far removed from refurbishing the image of the “yellow Peril” which permeated the American image of Asia before world war I. On the other hand, and undoubtedly related to the first, is an uneasy malaise that America’s “good times” are coming to an end, reflected in a recent poll of The Wall Street Journal (May 1, 1989) showing that “Americans who think the standard of living is falling narrowly outnumber those who think it is rising.” Two years ago, a respected journalist commented on a speech given at Harvard University by Professor Paul Streeten of Oxford University; the latter having enunciated the thesis that Pax Americana was coming to an end, just as Pax Brittanica had after world war I. The journalist, Leonard Silk, noted that the United States has become “the world’s biggest debtor today” (Herald Tribune, May 9-10, 1987) but that no other country was rushing in to take the role of “hegemon.”
