The period since the end of the Second World War has now exceeded in length the period between the two World Wars. The time has thus perhaps come when it is possible to attempt an overall comparison of the two periods, of the types of threat to stability that arose in each, and of the differing strategies adopted to meet these.

The interwar period is associated in the popular mind with the attempt to pursue peace through a policy of “appeasement.” This is the term traditionally used, primarily by hostile critics, and principally after the event, to describe the policy aimed to conciliate, rather than to coerce, those powers dissatisfied with the existing status quo. The policies so described, as is now generally recognized, were adopted by most of the governments concerned not primarily through crass refusal to face the facts of the situation or to summon the resolution necessary for active resistance.

With several notable and recent exceptions, the current literature on “modernization” in “developing countries” implicitly or explicitly assumes an inherent irreconcilability between “modern” and “traditional” values, institutions, and behavior patterns. Related to this assumption is the expectation that whenever important elements off these two social systems collide, the natural result is social convulsion.

It is typical of this literature to qualify these assumptions with the caveat, commonly employed in conjunction with the use of “ideal j types,” that differences between these two apparent classes of society are only relative, or that “pure” cases of either type are never manifested.

Since the April 1960 student-led revolution there, debate in South Korea on the peaceful unification of the two Koreas has increased in frequency, intensity, and popularity among students, intellectuals, political parties, and other social groups. Popular support for independent and peaceful unification is rapidly mounting. This changing mood may be due to more effective North Korean propaganda as well as to the unhappy economic conditions in South Korea. In response to North Korea's aggressive unification campaign, the ROK (Republic of Korea) government has found it necessary to set up a research organization dedicated solely to the study of problems of unification.

At Angkor, where the remains of an antique kingdom's abandoned capital are found deep in the Cambodian jungle, the exquisite bas-reliefs tell a story more compelling than written history. Battle scenes with a great cavalry of war elephants meld into episodes of river combat between handsomely carved fleets of oar-powered boats in an unending stone panorama of warfare as it was fought centuries ago in Southeast Asia. For one who has seen these carved panels it is not difficult to realize that when the Europeans arrived in mainland Southeast Asia in the early seventeenth century they found warfare endemic there. This conflict was not less bloody nor less protracted than that which Europe had already experienced or was about to endure in the Thirty Years' War. But this violent interaction in Asia did not seem to hold the prospect for the development of a nation-state system such as was emerging from European warfare. Rather than moving toward centralized states and configurations of alliances, the peoples of Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century appeared to be entering a phase, repetitious in their history, in which political fragmentation and spasmodic conflict were hallmarks.