Though fairly stable over the past decade, the Asian-Pacific area is entering a fluid stage, heralding important changes. Whether these changes will be conducive to a more peaceful, stable, and prosperous Asia-Pacific, or ominous of the approach of new chaos and conflict
in the region, is of concern to many. This paper attempts to highlight the opportunities as well as challenges that the region will face in the next ten to fifteen years and explores the possibility of creating a more propitious strategic framework, in which the level of military confrontation between the superpowers would be reduced, economic integration and political cooperation among the Asian-Pacific states enhanced, and potential crises removed.

The strategic situation in the Asian-Pacific area can be viewed from two perspectives--from that of relations among the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, and that of the regional balance of the Asian states.  Although these two perspectives are distinct from each other, they are often overlapping and interactive.

This study of the naval-training system grew out of our larger project on the development of China's strategic weapons. After completing work on the history of Beijing's nuclear weapons program, we began research on Project 09, China's development program for nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. This research brought to light important new materials on the overall growth of China's navy and led to interviews with Chinese naval specialists. The new data suggested important insights into questions related to military professionalism and the long-range strategy for Chinese military power. This review of the history of Chinese naval training thus illuminates larger issues of Chinese defense planning and security goals. It also provides a baseline for assessing the missions of the navy and its readiness for carrying out those missions.

Soviet theoreticians reject the concept of a national strategy or a grand strategy above military strategy, reasoning that the national strategy or grand strategy of the United States and other Western countries is simply their anti-Soviet stance. They further maintain that military strategy includes political, economic, scientific and technological, and moral factors. Realization of national military objectives (that is, national power) requires unification of these factors. Thus it is not necessary to have a national strategy or grand strategy beyond military strategy.

The Soviets hold that military doctrine and military policy, rather than national strategy or grand strategy, are above military strategy. In fact, the Western notion of national strategy or grand strategy and the Soviet concept of military doctrine or military policy are similar in content. The distinction derives from the fact that the Soviet Union is a Communist country, where the Party leads everything. The Party's policy is the government's policy, and the decisions and resolutions passed at a Party congress are guiding principles not only for the government, but for all spheres of daily life.

A Conference report of the Center for International Security and Arms Control. This conference report contains papers presented at a symposium sponsored by the Institute of Far Eastern Studies (IFES) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the International Strategic Institute at Stanford (ISIS) at Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, June 21-30, 1988.

Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation has been widely acclaimed in the few years since its publication. Given its promise for promoting cooperation in ‘prisoner's dilemma games' (PDGs), such praise is unsurprising. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy Axelrod recommends for achieving an evolution of cooperation in PD situations has application to the negotiation of arms control treaties.

The Korean Peninsula is one of the areas of acute political instability and conflict in the Asian-Pacific region. This is partly but not exclusively because of the unsettled problems between the two parts of Korea. The international environment could be more conducive to an inter-Korean dialogue, to national reconciliation, and to reunification. Without interfering in the internal affairs of the Korean nation, the United States and the Soviet Union, and other major powers of the region, could create more-favorable conditions settling the Korean problem, understanding always that the principal aspects of the problem are internal and must be solved by the two Korean states themselves.

It is the American view that Japan has been totally dependent on the United States for its national security, and that this favorable condition has enabled the Japanese to dedicate themselves fully to economic development with no significant military burden. The competitive edge of many U.S. industries, including those of steel, shipbuilding, electrical appliances, motorcycles, office equipment, automobiles, and computers, has eroded considerably since the 1960s, and Japan has taken all the blame for the downfall. The U.S. semiconductor industry is on the verge of falling behind because of aggressive Japanese sales policies.  Moreover, Japan has for years protected its domestic industries so the U.S. industries have struggled in vain to penetrate the Japanese market.  Some U.S. critics argue that the disputes over a huge trade imbalance between the two countries can best be explained by these unfair Japanese advantages. The invisibility of the role of Japanese contribution toward western security has also intensified irritation in the U.S. Congress. The recent controversy over the FS-X (fighter supporter) project of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) evolved out of these circumstances. The details of and epilogue to this controversy are discussed in this paper.