Japan and Latin American in the new global order

Brief Reviews correctly sees television inescapably putting distance between the Chinese regime and increasingly self-conscious viewers. But he wisely avoids crude, deterministic predictions that the regime’s fall is near, understanding that television can simultaneously send many messages. For instance, the consumerism and individualism that television inevitably seems to promote may today be strengthening, not undermining, the leadership’s new message that the Chinese people should worry not about politics but about making a better living. East Asia and the Pacific: Challenges for U.S. Policy. By Robert G. Sutter. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992. 182 pp. $33.95 (paper). While the Bush administration’s policies towards Asia in the immediate post-cold war era were largely reactive and ad hoc, the new Clinton administration now has an opportunity to fashion a more coherent U.S. approach to the region that is home to half the world’s population. This book is an evenhanded survey of the issues that Clinton’s officials must confront as they develop new policies, Sutter advertises his bias in favor of a goslow approach emphasizing “close relations with longstanding friends and allies, centered on Japan,” and only “cautious interchange” with the domestically preoccupied regional giantsChina, India, and Russia. The author’s well-taken caution does not make for a dull book. He makes the debates over Asia policy come alive, particularly when he describes the sharply conflicting proposals for resolving our trade problems with Japan. Sutter also provides us with a lucid account of how a multifaceted crisis in U.S.-China relations that was building in the spring of 1991was defused, possibly just temporarily. This book would be a valuable resource in any course on U.S. Asia policy but its price makes it difficult to recommend this slim volume as a textbook. Japan and LatinAmerka in the New Global Order. Edited by Susan Kaufman Purcell and Robert M. Immerman. Boulder, Cola.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992. I63 pp. $9.95 (paper). The U.S. and Japanese governments differ on many topics, but not Latin America, a region where the two cooperate more than they compete. The four essays in Japan andLatin America contend this results partly from Japan’s not pursuing its economic interests in the region as aggressively as in other areas of the world. More important, Japan has carefully crafted a Latin American policy that closely follows the American lead, and has thus minimized headto-head conflict with American economic interests and American political initiatives. For these reasons, the authors suggest, Latin America offers a proving ground for effective U.S.-Japanese cooperation, one in which Washington provides strategic design that taps Japan’s aid and investment resources. But such a relationship will be viable, they properly warn, only if Washington sufficiently engages Tokyo in the policy planning process and prevents emerging trade pacts from excluding investors outside of the Western hemisphere. David Gross Spring 1993 I 317