Gorbachev'S Asia-Pacific Security and its Implications for the South Asian Regional State System

The developing and changing international scene since the world wars has highlighted two facts on the part of nation-states as actors in the environment: One, the constant need for an effective and acceptable “governing image” and two, the construction or resetting of values, goals or structures so as to collaborate with the governing image of the times. The governing image is essentially international in character, though created by a nation or a group of nations as a world view projection and the adjustments to the international environment.

In concrete terms, the post-war world has been dominated by such images as bi-polarity, containment, liberation, socialist international or nonalignment. While alliances have been a product of most of these, the last, nonalignment, emerged as an alternative world view of the then periphery powers.

The situation started to change in the 1970s. Economic power and political influence became more diffuse. The utility of military force to achieve political influence reduced. Success in cases of controlled uses of military power also became problematic. United States' Vietnam and Soviet Union's Afghanistan are cases illustrative enough. The decline of Super Power capability to use their will throughout the international arena is becoming increasingly evident.

The world today is entering into what has been described as a ‘post-post war era’. In this era the United States and the USSR are still major powers that have continued to retain their lethal military capabilities. The INF Pact nevertheless, both the powers continue to hold a significant strategic force capability. Yet, the range of their political influence is in fact contracting. The Soviets are pulling out of Afghanistan, Namibian probem has been resolved; there have also been no ‘interventions’ in Burma, in the Maldives or in Eastern Europe. One may argue that the Soviet Union is going through a phase of rest and recuperation under Gorbachev's perestroika and that the United States has already overreached itself. The fact remains that in the post-post war era there are no longer empty spaces between the United States and the USSR that need filling up. There are powers in those areas. The focus today has shifted to the regional powers and the regional state systems that they have evolved.