ABSTRACT
The possibility that the Asian economies will develop ever closer ties and that a much more economically and politically integrated Asian region will result seems increasingly likely to many, particularly in view of Europe’s enhanced economic integration and the emergence of the North American free trade bloc. The alliances forged out of the Cold War also operated against Asian cohesion. The United States sought to create a “grand crescent” of anticommunist regimes supporting American military bases from the Aleutian Islands through Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and extending south through the Philippines and South Vietnam. Japanese economic policy began to change significantly with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1971, and the subsequent quadrupling of world oil prices in 1973. Japan’s position as a Gulliver in an Asian Lilliput is based far more on its economic prowess than on its cultural appeal.
