KIRKUS REVIEW
According to Bergner, former chief of staff for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, post-cold war hopes for world tranquility will soon be shaken by a new world order featuring a potentially dangerous rivalry among the US, Germany, and Japan. Bergner argues convincingly that both Germany and Japan will emerge over the next decade not only as preeminent regional powers but as superpowers likely to be armed with nuclear weapons. Will these former Axis nations remain apt students of the American democratic values that helped them to rebuild after WW II? Bergner believes that both of the new giants will probably pull away from the American international political agenda as their national identities coalesce. Thus far, neither is regarded with much trust by the world community; neither has a seat on the UN Security Council. Moreover, while the USSR was to the US primarily a military rival (starving its economy to this end), ``Germany and Japan already present more of an economic challenge to American technology, trade, finance and education than the Soviet Union ever did.'' Far from weakening West Germany, Bergner says, German reunification gives that nation a place to invest surplus cash and new labor resources, which will enable Germany to dominate the European Community. And Japan's economy, he points out, will by decade's end probably grow to be 77 percent as large as the US economy. In this new order of power, ``America should be the unique Atlantic/Pacific swing power, fully integrated into both Europe and East Asia.'' A brisk and clear, if not sanguine, elucidation of complex issues.