Volume 11, Number 1, 1980

EN:

On August 12^th 1978 the People's Republic of China and Japan signed a treaty of peace and friendship that solemnly recognized the reconciliation between Peking and Tokyo. The original character and political, economic and geo-strategic meaning of this signal document can only be understood by placing it within Us true context. In fact, this context has two facets. The Sino-Japanese treaty can first be seen in an historical context that must be kept in mind since the « Far Eastern Question » has, from the end of the 19^th century, been at the heart of Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese relations as well as constituting an ongoing concern for the major European powers. Prior to 1939, Japanese imperialism had succeeded in imposing its law in China and in East Asia establishing what Tokyo called a « co-prosperity sphere ». During the Second World War, the United States, Great Britain and the USSR - allies against the common enemy - had to take important decisions with regard to Japan to prepare the terms of occupation. The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 established the new American-Japanese relationship. Normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations began with the signing of the joint declaration of 1956.

The August 12^th 1978 Peace Treaty between Peking and Tokyo can be further seen as part of specific diplomatic context comprising the Sino-Soviet conflict, East-West détente and the Sino-American rapprochement that opened the way - immediately after President Nixon's trip to China in February 1972 - for the Sino-Japanese rapprochement.

Legally, the Treaty contains only five short sections, the most original of which being the « anti-hegemony » clause provided for in section 2. Diplomatically, it is not exaggerated to recognize in this Sino-Japanese agreement an element of a New International Political Order presently taking form and that has to necessarily accompany the implantation of the « New International Economic Order » that the countries of the Third World have been demanding since 1974.

EN:

For the period 1965-1977, for each of the five ASEAN member countries (Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore) as well as for the whole of the region, were examinee the evolution of the volume and of the components of the import and export trade, as well as that of the proportional share of the various trading partners. The following tendencies are apparent. 1) The region's national economies are increasingly « world trade oriented ». 2) Since the founding of ASEAN in 1967, the proportional share of intraregional trade has been declining. 3) The composition of this trade is increasingly determined by the needs of industrial countries. 4) The proportional share of the trading carried out with industrial countries, and particularly with Japan, is also increasing. 5) Singapore seems to play a key role in this articulation of the integration of the region to the world market, an integration detrimental to regional internal integration, an official goal of the ASEAN.

EN:

This study deals with two increasingly important aspects of international relations : first, the interpretation of the North-South dynamic of the international System and second, the significance of détente in the Euro-Arabo-African mini-triangle.

In his discussion of the first problematic, the author suggests it would be useful to take an interdependence approach towards the analysis of North-South relations, implying that the international system is hexagonal as regards both structure and process and that non-alignment is becoming a sixth pole of influence in the system. More specifically, and taking as a starting point the « depolarization » of the détente process, the author argues that the security objectives of the West European, Arab and African political Systems are in fact interdependent. This interdependence is to be found above all in their interest in diluting the East-West conflict and instituting a policy of détente, the purpose of which is all the more significant for being internal - i.e. the stabilization, legitimization and integration of these political Systems. Since the effects of such a policy will be felt only gradually, these countries find they have a common interest in a complementary strategy whereby the East-West conflict is segmented and intersected by the North-South conflict (intra-alliance, even).

The aim of the study is to show that, in the theory of international relations, greater attention should be paid to the motivations and strategies of actors in the South and their impact on the international system in the economic problem areas as well as the political and strategic ones.

Because the properties of political reality differ from those of physical reality, the properties of political regularities also differ from those of physical regularises. The regularities we discover are soft. They are soft because they are outcomes of processes that exhibit plastic rather than cast-iron control. They are imbedded in history and involve recurrent « passings-through » of large numbers of human memories, learning processes, human goal seeking impulses, and choices among alternatives. They decay quickly because of the memory, creative searching, and learning that underlie them. Indeed social science itself may contribute to this decay, since learning increasingly include not only learning from experience, but from scientific research itself.

Gabriel A. ALMOND et Stephan J. GENCO, « Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of Politics », World Politics, vol. XXIX, n° 4, juillet 1977, pp. 493-494.

It has become a platitude that the whole world is now interdependent... Yet what a tremendous platitude it is /... If this platitude is unalterably true, its implications must profoundly affect the conditions of human life for the future ; it must transform all our thinking about social organization ; it must modify all our programmes and policies. Clearly we ought to be thinking seriously about it, and asking ourselves what it involves.

A. MuiR, The Interdependent World and lts Problems, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1973, p. 1.

EN:

Anti-German sentiment in France has deep roots that extend back to the middle of the 19^th century. A permanent theme of French foreign policy, it manifested itself with force during the campaign for the European elections of June 10, 1979. This explosion can be explained in terms of the fear of a part of the political forces to see themselves dragged too far into a process of European integration that would contribute to submitting France to the economic forces of a Germany very dependent on the United States. The Communists were the main standard bearers of this campaign in which the Gaullists and other politicians participated. An examinationt of the themes of their public statements shows that references to the Third Reich, to trials of former Nazis and to the role that present leaders of the FRG played under Hitler predominated. Criticism of German domestic politics was primarily concerned with the threat to freedoms in the FRG and with the rise of politicians such as Franz Josef Strauss. Comparisons of the economic, commercial and industriel statistics of the Federal Republic of Germany and France fed concerns that prompted once again speculation with respect to German reunification and the association of nuclear weapons with the FRG. In attacking social-democracy the FCP attempted to further undercut Franco-German relations and to accentuate its split with the French Socialist Party. The anti-German campaign did not, in fact, have a great impact on public opinion or government policy. Nevertheless, both the range and persistence of these themes show that xenophobia in general and anti-German sentiment in particular are not on the point of disappearing in France.