ABSTRACT
In the mid: 1980s the Pacific basin countries entered a new era. At the end of World War II chaos, ruin and revolution were the norm and the future looked dark. Twenty-five years later, in the early 1970s, the long war in Indochina was only just winding down in Vietnam, but was about to take horrific dimensions in Cambodia; tension remained high between South Korea and North Korea; the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos were ripe for insurrection; Indonesia was still trying to withdraw from the confrontational stance taken by President Sukarno, who died in 1970; and Chinese leaders were struggling over the succession to Mao and over new policy directions, while expressing their bitter enmity for Brezhnev's Russia. The growth of Russian influence in Southeast Asia was evident to all as the Russians made increased use of their bases in Vietnam, and the Russian Pacific fleet had begun to undergo the rapid expansion necessary to maintain that influence.
