Reluctant Guardian: The United States in East Asia‪.‬

SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR, only the Asia Pacific region has seemed at peace and relatively free of change. The collapse of multiethnic states and empires has rocked Europe, Eurasia, and Africa. Anarchy and ethnic or religious strife have broken out in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, the trans-Caucasus, Liberia, Zaire, Somalia, and Rwanda. The Middle East has seen a brutal Iraqi attempt to annex Kuwait and the end of civic consensus in Algeria. Major changes have taken place in the relationships between Israelis, Palestinians, and other Arabs, and civil society has gradually reemerged in Lebanon. Confrontation with military regimes in Panama and Haiti and a border war between Peru and Ecuador has marked the advent of a new era in Latin America. Many of these situations have occasioned US military intervention or serious consideration of it--either in the name of the United States itself or under the banner of the United Nations. At the same time, there have been major adjustments in US military spending and personnel levels. As a percentage of GNP, US military spending is now at the level of the mid- to late 1930s. The size of the US armed forces has shrunk to numbers last seen in 1939. Outside the Asia Pacific region, the United States has radically adjusted the pattern of its military deployments. The United States has built up its forces in the Persian Gulf, and the Atlantic Alliance, which France has now rejoined, is expanding eastward through the Partnership for Peace. The United States had withdrawn two-thirds of its forces from Europe by the time it joined the operation in the Balkans, the first military operation in NATO history.