US Role in Asia under a New World Order

Abstract

It has become too common to state that America's role in East Asia and the Pacific is in transition. Indeed, it is widely known that the underpinnings of past US policy in Asia and the Pacific, as in other parts of the world, are subject to significant change. The strangely reassuring bipolarity of the Cold War world has given way increasingly to a much less structured new world order, where sometimes conflicting trends of economic competition, military instability, and political turmoil intersect and complicate US foreign policymaking.