ABSTRACT
Although the Far East (to use an old-fashioned Eurocentric term) has never lacked for conflicts of its own, most of those that have been waged there over the past two centuries have resulted, directly or indirectly, from the impact of the West. The author is not an expert on Asian affairs. But in assessing the possibility of new conflicts and new disorders developing in this region, it is necessary to know about the problems caused by social and economic change as well as those of interstate tension; to look at the vertical conflicts as well as the horizontal ones. The United States will continue to participate in its own right as a Pacific power and to play a major role in the region; but its relations with other actors in the system, and their relations with each other, will be determined by indigenous factors and not by Western rivalries.
