Introduction: Asia in the Global Balance

Abstract

The global balance of power — such as it is — operates at three main levels: in the rough equivalence of strategic nuclear power as between the United States and the Soviet Union; in the rough equivalence again, nuclear and conventional, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; and, in the rest of the world, in largely stable if marginally frictional regional patterns of force, where the competing superpowers are either irrelevant or act within accepted spheres of influence, or operate across blurred boundaries to keep conflict regionally contained.