ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the external relations of the European Community, focusing mainly on Asia and the Soviet bloc. In Asia the most urgent problem for the Community is probably Japan. The Japanese are, apart from the Americans, the only major industrial nation in the non-communist world which is not in the enlarged Community. Short of nuclear weapons, there are the dangers of Japanese reactions to a break-up of the world-wide economic and financial system. Some of the arguments which suggested that the United States was a very doubtful practitioner of the 'Community method' seem to apply with even greater force to Japan. By contrast the European Community's relations with the poor underdeveloped majority in Asia, outside the islands of Japan, lend themselves to more straightforward measures. The Soviet Government may of course decide in the end that it is worth re-establishing the regional tyranny of Eastern Europe which existed in the early 1950s.
