American-Asian tensions

The present stage of the Free World's struggle for peace and security, American foreign policy turns increas ingly on the situation in Asia. In Western Europe, national economies have attained unprecedented high levels of productivity and individual standards of living, while the alliance that binds fifteen countries from the coasts of the North Atlantic to the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean marshals a powerful deterrent force against Soviet aggres sion. During the years of the patient European build-up after World War II, Asia was relegated to a secondary po sition. True, some economic aid had been granted to Asian countries, and in specific emergencies, such as the Korean War and Indo-Chinese crisis, the United States brought its military and diplomatic potential to bear in an effort to check communist aggression. Nevertheless, Europe never relinquished its place of primacy in our comprehensive foreign programs. This situation is now in the process of changing.

With the security of Western Europe much improved over what it was in 1948, the major American strategic effort is presently being directed to the vast area stretch ing from newly independent Libya to long independent Japan. The stakes are high: The tremendous human and natural resources of Asia must ultimately tip the scale one way or the other in the contest being waged for a new world order. The issue hangs in doubt, for communism, whose intellectual appeal has been exhausted and whose armed might has been checkmated in Europe, still poses either a military or a psycho-political threat to every Asian nation on the rim around the Sino-Soviet bloc. Since the death of Stalin, it has become obvious that Asia is to be the arena for the new phase of the "competitive co existence struggle.

Along with the shift of emphasis to Asia has come a realization how inadequate is the level of knowledge in the United States concerning the methods for winning the trust and friendship of the Asian peoples and for perform ing the military, economic and political tasks which must be performed in order to win their voluntary allegiance to the defense of the Free World. In view of the difficulties which the United States has encountered in dealing with other members of the Atlantic Community, it should come as no surprise that these tasks present a staggering chal lenge in regions of the world with which the United States maintained, up to the outherak of the Second World War, some important commercial, but only tenuous cul tural and political relations.

The purpose of this study is to help the student of Asian affairs to isolate the areas of tension in United States Asian relations. For purposes of this work, tenalon was taken to mean a condition which reflects the pursuit of in compatible foreign policy objectives. Once this condition obtains, nations may be able to cooperate on specific ad hoc problems, but they cannot agree upon broad purposes such as mutual defense.