The resolve that America demonstrated in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and the brilliant way the challenge was met, turned the Gulf crisis into a relatively short-term aberration.
Although linked with and influenced by the politics of the outside world, politics in the Asian Pacific region have moved in their own unique way. Structural changes in world politics caused by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have indeed deeply influenced the Asian Pacific region.