The Legislative History Of Naturalization In The United States, From The Revolutionary War To 1861

But any such outcome, should it ever happen, still lies far in the future. [1028] The one scenario that seems inconceivable is that Japan emerges as a stand-alone superpower to rival China: it is simply too small, too particularistic, too isolated and too weakly endowed with natural resources to be able to achieve this. [1029] … AND THE ELEPHANT The elephant in the room or, more precisely the region, is the United States. The latter is not even vaguely part of East Asia, being situated thousands of miles to its east, but with its military alliance with Japan, its military bases in South Korea and its long-term support for Taiwan, not to mention the Korean and Vietnamese wars, it has been the dominant power in the region ever since it replaced Europe in the 1950s. That state of affairs, however, has begun to change with remarkable speed. A combination of 9/11 and the new turn in Chinese foreign policy in East Asia, together with China’s emergence as the fulcrum of the regional economy — one of those accidental juxtapositions of history — has transformed Chinese influence in the region, while that of the United States, hugely preoccupied with the Middle East to the virtual exclusion of all else, it would seem, declined sharply during the Bush presidency. [1030] Given that the period involved has been less than a decade, the shift in the balance of power in the region has been dramatic ...»