The Trilateral Concert: Indispensable but not Sufficient

Abstract

It is gratifying to look back and note that this book on the future of European Community (EC)-Japan-United States relations had its origins in a meeting in Berlin, in September 1989, which was sponsored by the Japan-German Center in Berlin. That meeting, which took place before the Soviet Union was transformed into a group of independent states, before Germany was unified, before the Balkans drifted into civil war, and before the United States, Germany and Japan found themselves in a global credit crunch, took an unusually foresighted, realistic point of view. As a result, the articles in this book appear to be more relevant and significant in the summer of 1992, than they did when the plan for their research was conceived, and the issues which they address are likely to become more important and in some cases more urgent, as we approach the turn of the Twenty First Century.