Suchergebnisse

Southeast Asia is now being stripped naked. Bewildered by the toxicants of modernization and buffeted by the gales of international politics, Southeast Asia has lost its sense of direction and suffers unfathomable despair. In this context Japan has become a strong target of criticism. This criticism is not wholly superficial, and if Japan is both to further its own interest and to contribute to this, area of the world it must understand and cope with that criticism. The most important feature of the anti-Japanese criticism in Southeast Asia is that it is based on "despair,"

For the past three decades, student movements in most countries in the world have been beaten back, but there are signs that some may be returning. In response to the Arab Spring, students participated fully in Tahrir Square and beyond. The student elections in Egypt that followed, however, seem to have been divided according to the various links that each student group had with the political groups contending for state power, like the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists on the one side, against secular and revolutionary groups on the other. It is not certain if the student elections really reflected the overall mood of the country or whether they were simply shaped by political protagonists outside the campuses.

Even though relations between Asia and Europe remained largely unexplored during most part of the period following the Second World War, the end of the Cold War has created con-ditions for better relations between the two. The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) provides the most important basis for cooperation between the two continents. China is taking keen interest in this regard by initiating steps towards deepening the Asia-Europe partnership, thanks to globalization. From a Chinese perspective, the cooperation promotes its own economic reforms programme. Asia-Europe cooperation also facilitates the security dialogue between ASEAN-EU and China. That the US at times becomes a factor in affecting China-EU relations is a matter of concern for both the sides. An important area of cooperation relates to the estab-lishment of a new multipolar international order.

Michael Rywkin: Perestroika in Central AsiaI will cover only a few points. It is obvious that, as far as the nationalities are concerned, perestroika has affected them in different ways. It is very hard to say that there is a uniform situation as far as perestroika's impact is concerned. We know well what is going on with the national fronts in the Baltic; we also know about the Caucasian situation's being complicated by difficulties not only between the local nationalities and the Muscovites, but also among the local nationalities themselves, and minorities within minorities. We have still a different situation in Belorussia, and yet another in Central Asia. Some of the events in Central Asia are directly connected with republics, while other trends already started beforehand.

Introduction -- Chapter 1 : two approaches to managing regional security -- Chapter 2 : the establishment of SEATO -- Chapter 3 : the 'teething' years -- Chapter 4 : the Laotian crisis -- Chapter 5 : interlude -- Chapter 6 : Vietnam -- Chapter 7 : the slow end of SEATO -- Conclusion.