What happens to a country's genetic/cultural pool when more than fifty million of its citizens—over a fifth of its present population—die unnatural deaths or emigrate over sixty years? What happens when many of these people are among the country's most talented individuals—entrepreneurs, army officers, party leaders, successful farmers, leading writers, and the intelligentsia? And what happens to a country's capacity for critical analysis when, in addition to physical disasters on the scale indicated, it has been sealed off from the rest of the world and severe limits have been placed on discussion within the country?

Soviet relations with much of the world, and with the United States in particular, are clearly at a low ebb, a fact underlined at the beginning of my most recent trip to the Soviet Union in May. Soviet Customs, always suspicious of Americans, searched the luggage of our Citizens Exchange Corps-sponsored group much more thoroughly than that of the group I had led the previous year. Still, this was the only significant manifestation of Soviet ire we encountered during our stay in the USSR.

After two decades of relative political stability and unprecedented economic progress, South Korea is once again racked with political disorder, civil strife, and student unrest. The trouble began in Seoul in May with massive demonstrations by students demanding free elections for a new government and a quick end to martial law. What followed was a virtually total military takeover of the government and even more inclusive martial law. The initially peaceful demonstrations escalated into grave civil strife, bringing Kwangju, the country's fourth largest city, under the control of protesting youths.

Observers of Korea have recently received a surfeit of facts about the military takeover, riots, civil insurgency in Cholla province, widespread arrests, and abuse of prisoners. What we lack is a firm sense of what all these events mean for South Korea and the United States. Though it is still early, sufficient evidence exists to warrant a preliminary judgment about the new leadership of post-Park Korea and what may be ahead for the Republic of Korea.

For the past four years right-wing and left-wing organizations in the United States have been aware of a new foreign policy establishment known as the Trilateral Commission. This group, founded by David Rockefeller, is comprised largely of corporate executives from Western Europe, Japan, and the U.S. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Cyrus Vance, as well as seventeen other members and former members of the Carter administration, belonged to this group before they took office. Key political figures in the governments of Japan and Western Europe also belong, as do John Anderson, George Bush, and Henry Kissinger.

When the Sandinista Liberation Front triumphantly marched into Managua, Nicaragua, on July 19, 1979, the air was filled with joy, youthful enthusiasm, and vigor. Accompanying the Sandinistas in the victory march were conservative businessmen, Catholic priests, peasants, urban workers, and leftist intellectuals. All were part of the pluralistic alliance that defeated Anastasio Somoza and his hated National Guard, the country's only security force under the forty-five-year dictatorship of the Somoza family.

Employees at a Coca-Cola subsidiary in Guatemala are the victims of a terrorist campaign specifically designed to prevent them from organizing a recognized trade union, raising grave questions about the extent to which U.S. companies should be held accountable for their actions and policies abroad.