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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 11, 1984
PAGE 11
Asian-Pacific Affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Oakley
Johnson, agrees.
"America's orientation is moving away from
Europe toward Asia. The future of the United States is in the
Pacific," he said recently....
� �
� � �-
That sea change in trade flows...has, moreover, increased feel
ings of what is now described as "Euro p essimism" as Washington's
European allies � themselves
.£!!!
aside
B.Y
the
unl
ted States in
favor of the dynamic economies of the East.
This feeling that Washington is abandoning the old Atlantic Al
liance has been intensified by what appears in Europe to be a
pro-Asia tilt in the Reagan administration•••• Mr. Reagan lauded
the Pacific rim in a major foreign policy speech in mid-April.
"I see America and our Pacific neighbors as nations of the fu
ture, going forward together in a mighty enterprise to build
dynamic growth economies and a safer world,"
he
said••••
The Commerce Department figures tell the story. In 1979, trade
between the United States and Western Europe was $1.1 billion
greater than trade between the United States and the Pacific
basin nations of Asia. The switch took place the very next year,
as Asian trade jumped ahead of trade with Europe by $2 billion.
By 1983, the difference had leapt to $28.9 billion••••
John Zysman, a political scientist who directs the Berkeley
Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of
California, Berkeley, warned that U.S. policy and industries must
learn to deal with the "state-centered capitalism" of the Pacific
[
in such countries as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and SingaporeJ.
"The rise of Asia means that traditional ways of looking at trade
and industry are wrong. You are not talking about a placid way of
trading, you are talking about winners
and
losers,"
he
said....
"If we respond, our leadership will continue, but if not, we will
face a decline that will be traumatic for ourselves and the
world," he added.
East & West Germany: Television's Magnetic Pull
The relations between the two parts of Germany continue to deepen, albeit
not without difficulties. The recent flood of immigrants to the West has
rather suddenly slowed down. According to the West German news magazine
DER SPIEGEL, a group of leading East Germans has protested the new emigra
tion policy of East German Communist Party leader, Erich Honecker. It said
that Prime Minister Willi Staph appealed last month to Soviet leaders to
intervene, saying that granting East Germans permission to leave endangered
the nation's stability. Mr. Staph's own niece, along with her husband and
children, were perhaps the most celebrated immigrants.
Nevertheless, the pull between the
two
Germanys appears to
be
an almost
magnetic attraction. On a day-in-day-out basis, no country in the Commu
nist world is so influenced
by
Western society as is East Germany. Simply
put, West German television, according to TV GUIDE (April 28, 1984) has
pretty much softened up the "other Germany":