Publications by Author: Nye%2C%20Joseph%20S.%2C%20Jr.

The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945, and some economists worry that the current crisis could spell the beginning of the end of globalization.

Hard economic times are correlated with protectionism, as each country blames others and protects its domestic jobs. In the 1930s, such "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies worsened the situation. Unless political leaders resist such responses, the past could become the future.

Ironically, however, such a grim prospect would not mean the end of globalization, defined as the increase in worldwide networks of interdependence.

Globalization has several dimensions, and, though economists all too often portray it and the world economy as being one and the same, other forms of globalization also have significant effects—not all of them benign—on our daily lives.

The oldest form of globalization is environmental. For example, the first smallpox epidemic was recorded in Egypt in 1350 B.C. It reached China in 49 A.D., Europe after 700, the Americas in 1520, and Australia in l789.

Bubonic plague, or the Black Death, originated in Asia, but its spread killed a quarter to a third of Europe's population in the fourteenth century.

Europeans carried diseases to the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries that destroyed up to 95 percent of the indigenous population.

In 1918, a flu pandemic caused by a bird virus killed some 40 million people around the world, far more than the recently concluded world war. Some scientists today predict a repeat of an avian flu pandemic.

Since 1973, 30 previously unknown infectious diseases have emerged, and other familiar diseases have spread geographically in new, drug-resistant forms. In the 20 years after HIV/AIDS was identified in the 1980s it killed 20 million people and infected another 40 million around the world.

Some experts project that that number will double by 2010. The spread of foreign species of flora and fauna to new areas has wiped out native species, and may result in economic losses of several hundred billion dollars per year.

Global climate change will affect the lives of people everywhere. Thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries recently reported that there is new and strong evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities, and average global temperatures in the 21st century are projected to increase between 2.5 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The result could be more severe variations in climate, with too much water in some regions and not enough in others.

The effects will include stronger storms, hurricanes, and floods, deeper droughts, and more landslides. Rising temperatures have lengthened the freeze-free season in many regions, and glaciers are melting. The rate at which the sea level rose in the last century was 10 times faster than the average rate over the last three millennia.

Then there is military globalization, consisting of networks of interdependence in which force, or the threat of force, is employed. The world wars of the twentieth century are a case in point. The prior era of economic globalization reached its peak in 1914, and was set back by the world wars.

But, while global economic integration did not regain its 1914 level until half a century later, military globalization grew as economic globalization shrank.

During the Cold War, the global strategic interdependence between the United States and the Soviet Union was acute and well recognized. Not only did it produce world-straddling alliances, but either side could have used intercontinental missiles to destroy the other within 30 minutes.

This was distinctive not because it was totally new, but because the scale and speed of the potential conflict arising from military interdependence were so enormous.

Today, al-Qaida and other transnational actors have formed global networks of operatives, challenging conventional approaches to national defense through what has been called "asymmetrical warfare."

Finally, social globalization consists in the spread of peoples, cultures, images, and ideas. Migration is a concrete example. In the 19th century, some 80 million people crossed oceans to new homes ― far more than in the 20th century.

At the beginning of the 21st century, 32 million U.S. residents (11.5 percent of the population) were foreign-born. In addition, some 30 million visitors (students, businesspeople, tourists) enter the country each year.

Ideas are an equally important aspect of social globalization. Technology makes physical mobility easier, but local political reactions against immigrants had been growing even before the current economic crisis.

The danger today is that short-sighted protectionist reactions to the economic crisis could help to choke off the economic globalization that has spread growth and raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past half-century. But protectionism will not curb the other forms of globalization.

Modern technology means that pathogens travel more easily than in earlier periods. Easy travel plus hard economic times means that immigration rates may accelerate to the point where social friction exceeds general economic benefit.

Similarly, hard economic times may worsen relations among governments, as well as domestic conflicts that can lead to violence. At the same time, transnational terrorists will continue to benefit from modern information technology, such as the Internet.

And, while depressed economic activity may slow somewhat the rate of greenhouse-gas build-up in the atmosphere, it will also slow the types of costly programs that governments must enact to address emissions that have already occurred.

So, unless governments cooperate to stimulate their economies and resist protectionism, the world may find that the current economic crisis does not mean the end of globalization, but only the end of the good kind, leaving us with the worst of all worlds.

Relations between the United States and Russia have hit their lowest point since the Cold War. Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of igniting a global arms race and blasted those “who want to dictate their will to all others regardless of international norms and law”—a comment clearly aimed at the United States. That comes on top of Putin's remarks earlier this spring, in which he appeared to liken the United States to Germany's Third Reich. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Russia, at times, “seems to think and act in the zero-sum terms of another era.”

This growing tension has real and dangerous implications for US security: Washington is struggling to get Russia's help in sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program—one of the top American defense priorities. If we in the United States want that help, we need to offer something in return.

The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report paints a bleak picture: Iran is making faster progress than expected toward uranium enrichment. And our options are limited. A military attack against Iran not only would fail to stop an Iranian bomb, but it also would add to our difficulties in Iraq and the Muslim world more generally. Clearly, robust UN sanctions against Iran offer the best possible chance of persuading Iran to give up or at least slow down its plan to enrich uranium as part of its nuclear program.

But diplomatic efforts to tighten UN sanctions on Iran's nuclear program can only succeed if Russia agrees not to wield its veto in the Security Council. Russia is torn between its interests in non proliferation, its commercial interests in trade (including equipment for nuclear reactors), and its irritation with the United States.

The latest spark for disagreement between the United States and Russia is the American plan to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Bush administration argues that the missile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic will help counter Iran and do not endanger Russian security. Technically, that is correct. Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both pointed out that Russian missiles and decoys could easily swamp our defensive systems.

But the Russians see the situation differently, with Putin accusing the United States of “filling Eastern Europe with new weapons.” They object to the political symbolism of the US advance into former Soviet satellites, and also worry that someday our technological capabilities can develop the system as a threat to Russia. Our efforts to convince Russia otherwise have been fruitless.

Yet these tensions also create an opportunity. We should offer Russia a grand bargain: We would delay our plans for missile defense in Eastern Europe, while the Russians would agree to back stronger sanctions against Iran.

Since our technology is not fully developed and Iran is not on the brink of having long range missiles that can accommodate nuclear warheads, we could afford to offer Russia a delay in deployment while we engage in broader discussions of our military relationship. At the same time, since an Iranian nuclear weapon will undercut Russian security, and Russia has already offered to provide enrichment services to Iran if the Iranians forgo their own enrichment program, Russia might find the bargain tempting.

Critics might worry that we would give away too much. But we can afford to buy ourselves a little time. It's not likely that Iran could develop missiles capable of reaching Europe or the United States for at least a decade. Therefore, we can take our best shot at blocking Iran's nuclear ambitions without compromising our immediate security.

The United States clearly intends for any missile defense in Eastern Europe to protect against Iran, as well as any other hostile states. But we have the opportunity right now to prevent Iran from getting the nuclear bomb we're trying to defend ourselves against. By striking a deal with Russia to support sanctions against Iran, we would get a chance to make our strongest bid yet to prevent Iran from becoming the newest nuclear state. Everything else should be second to that goal. Although the administration will be reluctant to alter its missile defense plans, Rice often speaks of transformational diplomacy. What better example than for Bush to suggest this bargain to Putin when they meet at Kennebunkport this summer?

Joseph S. Nye Jr., is a Faculty Associate and Executive Committee member of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is also Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, John F. Kennedy School of Government, and University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University and author of Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.

When China's President Hu Jintao visits Washington this week, George W. Bush will confront one of the key challenges of his presidency—how to respond to China's increasing economic and military power. Everyone agrees that the rise of China is one of the transformative changes of this century, but Washington is divided between “panda huggers” who welcome it and “China hawks” who express alarm.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for example, complains that China's defense budget has increased by double digits since the mid-1990s, and will grow this year by 14.7 percent. Senators Charles Schumer, Lindsey Graham, and others believe that China's manipulation of the yuan is costing American jobs, and they threaten retaliation. Democracy and human rights advocates point to China's abysmal ratings in Freedom House's survey of the least free countries in the world.

A recent poll reports that one-third of Americans believe that China will “soon dominate the world,” while 54 percent see the emergence of China as a “threat to world peace.” Some commentators have argued that China will be as disruptive to the beginning of the 21st century as the Kaiser's Germany was to the 20th century.

But such views exaggerate China's power. Measured by official exchange rates, China is the fourth largest economy in the world and is growing at 9 percent annually, but its income per capita is only $1,700, or one-twenty-fifth that of the United States. China's research and development is only 10 percent of the American level.

If both the United States and China continue to grow at their current rates, it is possible that China's total economy could be larger than ours in 30 years, but American per capita income will remain four times greater. In addition, China's military power is far behind, and it lacks the soft power resources such as Hollywood and world-class universities that America enjoys. In contrast, the Kaiser's Germany had already passed Great Britain in industrial production by 1900, and launched a serious military challenge to Britain's naval supremacy.

The fact that China is a long way from overtaking the United States does not prevent a possible war over Taiwan, which China regards as a lost province. Weaker countries sometimes attack stronger countries—witness Japan at Pearl Harbor. But such a conflict is not inevitable as long as Taiwan does not declare formal independence and China does not become impatient. With time and generational change, this might be one of the rare conflicts that becomes more tractable over time.

We faced these problems a decade ago when the Clinton administration formulated our strategy for East Asia. We knew that hawks who called for containment of China would not be able to rally other countries to that cause. We also knew that if we treated China as an enemy, we were ensuring future enmity. While we could not be sure how China would evolve, it made no sense to foreclose the prospect of a better future. Our response combined balance of power with liberal integration. We reinforced the US-Japan alliance so that China could not play a “Japan card” against us, while inviting China to join the World Trade Organization. In a rare case of bipartisan comity, the Bush administration has continued that strategy.

China is now our third largest trade partner and second largest official creditor. Critics contend this trade with China has made us vulnerable. China could hurt us by dumping its holdings of dollars, but to do so would also damage its own economy. The yuan may be somewhat undervalued, but China accounts for only a third of the increase in America's trade deficit over the past five years, and a revaluation will not remove our deficit. As for jobs, even if America bars low-cost goods from China, we will import them from somewhere else. To solve our economic problems, we must get our own house in order by raising savings, cutting deficits, and improving our basic education.

China's internal evolution remains uncertain. It has lifted 400 million people out of poverty since 1990, but another 400 million live on less that $2 per day. It has enormous inequality, a migrant labor force of 140 million, severe pollution, and rampant corruption. Political evolution has failed to match economic progress. While more Chinese are free today than ever before in Chinese history, China is far from free. Some 110 million Chinese use the Internet, but the government censors the Internet. The danger is that party leaders, trying to counter the erosion of communism, will use nationalism as their ideological glue, and this could lead to an unstable foreign policy.

Faced with such uncertainty, President Bush has offered China a strategic dialogue to encourage it to evolve as a “responsible stakeholder.” He can take a lead from Ronald Reagan, who used the phrase “trust but verify.” For China, the right strategy is “embrace, but hedge.”

Joseph Nye, a Harvard University professor, was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in 1994 and 1995. He is author of The Power Game: A Washington Novel. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

If hard power is characterised by the use of military force to project our will, then the essence of soft power lies in values, in our culture and in the way we handle ourselves internationally. Soft power is about creating a sense of legitimacy for a nation's international aims.

To understand what's happening in US foreign policy you have to start with 9/11. Before that date the Bush administration had been running on a fairly traditional realist platform; no more nation-building, and a broadly unilateralist approach to foreign policy. After 9/11 the Bush administration realised this had to change.

Credit must be given to the Bush government for the speed in which they realised traditional conceptions of threats to national security had changed. However, what they are still struggling with is how to combat diffuse non-state actors, primarily in the form of al-Qa'ida.

Hard power, which is so successful at one level, does play a role in the war on terrorism, but it is not quite the role you first expect. Hard military power did topple the Taliban, something soft-power was in no position to do. However, if you look at the number of Taliban fighters actually killed in Afghanistan, you're looking at maybe no more than a third.

In order to win the war on terror therefore, you also need soft power. You need the stick but you also need the carrot. Bombing and land invasions of countries harbouring and fomenting terrorism are important, but we must employ greater public diplomacy in order to attract people away from militant Islam. If the US would divert even 1 per cent of its defence budget to public diplomacy it would signal a quadrupling of the budget currently given to those looking to implement soft power rather than hard.

To conclude, what is important is not soft power or hard power alone. It's a combination. Our military power stopped Soviet aggression, but it was our soft power which fostered cultural progression and sympathy to our aims and stopped states from falling into the hands of communism.

Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" in the late 1980s. It is now used frequently, and often incorrectly, by political leaders, editorial writers, and academics around the world. So what is soft power? Soft power lies in the ability to attract and persuade. Whereas hard power—the ability to coerce—grows out of a country's military or economic might, soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies.

Hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence. It forms the core of the Bush administration's new national security strategy. But according to Nye, the neo-conservatives who advise the president are making a major miscalculation: They focus too heavily on using America's military power to force other nations to do our will, and they pay too little heed to our soft power. It is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from recruiting supporters from among the moderate majority. And it is soft power that will help us deal with critical global issues that require multilateral cooperation among states. That is why it is so essential that America better understands and applies our soft power. This book is our guide.

After months of resistance, Iran has agreed to accept stricter international inspections and temporarily suspend its production of enriched uranium. That is progress, but not enough to stop an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Last summer, while Americans were searching fruitlessly for evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, international inspectors found disturbing evidence next door in Iran. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran began enriching uranium at a pilot centrifuge plant last August and is also constructing larger underground enrichment facilities. Within a year, the plant could make enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb a year and the larger facilities could make 15 to 20 times as much.

Iran said that its program were for peaceful generation of nuclear energy; but inspectors found traces of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium. The IAEA set an October 31 deadline for full compliance. And now, under pressure from Europe, Iran has called a temporary halt to enrichment. But it would be a mistake to stop at this point.

Iran correctly claims that, as a party to the non-proliferation treaty, it has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. In a sense, the NPT was born with a loophole. Even if a country allows inspections, it can legally accumulate enriched uranium (or reprocessed plutonium) under the guise of a peaceful energy program and then suddenly declare that circumstances have changed, and withdraw from the treaty. It could then produce nuclear weapons at short notice. If Iran were to do this, it would add to the dangers in an unstable region and would be likely to begin unraveling the non-proliferation regime worldwide.

For these good reasons, President George W. Bush has declared an Iranian nuclear weapon unacceptable. Our unilateral options, however, are limited. Not only is our military plate full in trying to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq but it would also be difficult to recruit allies. Fortunately, there is a precedent from something we began in the mid-1970s.

India had recently exploded a nuclear device, France was selling a reprocessing plant to Pakistan and Germany began to sell enrichment technology to Brazil. Many parties to the NPT planned to import or develop enrichment and reprocessing facilities. We feared that the non-proliferation regime was unraveling. The Jimmy Carter administration successfully persuaded France and Germany to curtail their exports, and countries as diverse as the Soviet Union and Japan joined us to form a Nuclear Suppliers Group. In 1977, we signed an agreement to restrict the export of enrichment and reprocessing facilities. We were able to plug part of the loophole without amending the treaty.

Mr. Bush should build on recent progress by approaching Europe, Russia and others and persuading them to offer Iran a deal that would fully plug this loophole. Russia, which is helping Iran to construct a nuclear energy reactor at Bushehr, would offer it a guarantee of low-enriched uranium fuel and reprocessing of the reactor's spent fuel in Russia. The deal would be given teeth by a United Nations Security Council resolution, endorsed by the US. The resolution would include a stick declaring that further proliferation of nuclear weapons would be a threat to peace under the Charter and that any country moving in such a direction would be subject to sanctions. The resolution would also include a carrot—guaranteeing Iran access to the non-dangerous aspects of nuclear energy technology. The deal could be sweetened by offers to relax existing sanctions and a security guarantee if Iran remains non-nuclear. At best, such a proposal would head off a looming danger in the Middle East. At worst, if Iran rejected the deal, it would have served notice of its real intentions.

European foreign ministers have produced a useful first step. Russia has refused our requests to cancel the Bushehr reactor but has indicated it would be willing to provide such fuel services. Given Iran's suspicion of the US, subtle American diplomacy would be needed to persuade Europe and Russia to launch the proposal, and we would then announce our support. There have been few recent issues on which the US, Russia, Europe and the UN are in close agreement. Such a proposal offers a rare opportunity to co-operate on an issue of vital concern.

Shortly after September 11th, President Bush's father observed that just as Pearl Harbor awakened this country from the notion that we could somehow avoid the call of duty to defend freedom in Europe and Asia in World War Two, so, too, should this most recent surprise attack erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism or in anything else for that matter.

But America's allies have begun to wonder whether that is the lesson that has been learned - or whether the Afghanistan campaign's apparent success shows that unilateralism works just fine. The United States, that argument goes, is so dominant that it can largely afford to go it alone.

It is true that no nation since Rome has loomed so large above the others, but even Rome eventually collapsed. Only a decade ago, the conventional wisdom lamented an America in decline. Bestseller lists featured books that described America's fall. Japan would soon become "Number One". That view was wrong at the time, and when I wrote "Bound to Lead" in 1989, I, like others, predicted the continuing rise of American power. But the new conventional wisdom that America is invincible is equally dangerous if it leads to a foreign policy that combines unilateralism, arrogance and parochialism.

A number of adherents of "realist" international-relations theory have also expressed concern about America's staying-power. Throughout history, coalitions of countries have arisen to balance dominant powers, and the search for traditional shifts in the balance of power and new state challengers is well under way. Some see China as the new enemy; others envisage a Russia-China-India coalition as the threat. But even if China maintains high growth rates of 6% while the United States achieves only 2%, it will not equal the United States in income per head (measured in purchasing-power parity) until the last half of the century.

Still others see a uniting Europe as a potential federation that will challenge the United States for primacy. But this forecast depends on a high degree of European political unity, and a low state of transatlantic relations. Although realists raise an important point about the levelling of power in the international arena, their quest for new cold-war-style challengers is largely barking up the wrong tree. They are ignoring deeper changes in the distribution and nature of power in the contemporary world.

Three kinds of power

At first glance, the disparity between American power and that of the rest of the world looks overwhelming. In terms of military power, the United States is the only country with both nuclear weapons and conventional forces with global reach. American military expenditures are greater than those of the next eight countries combined, and it leads in the information-based "revolution in military affairs". In economic size, America's 31% share of world product (at market prices) is equal to the next four countries combined (Japan, Germany, Britain and France). In terms of cultural prominence, the United States is far and away the number-one film and television exporter in the world. It also attracts the most foreign students each year to its colleges and universities.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some analysts described the resulting world as uni-polar, others as multi-polar. Both are wrong, because each refers to a different dimension of power that can no longer be assumed to be homogenized by military dominance. Uni-polarity exaggerates the degree to which the United States is able to get the results it wants in some dimensions of world politics, but multi-polarity implies, wrongly, several roughly equal countries.

Instead, power in a global information age is distributed among countries in a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely uni-polar. To repeat, the United States is the only country with both intercontinental nuclear weapons and large state-of-the-art air, naval and ground forces capable of global deployment. But on the middle chessboard, economic power is multi-polar, with the United States, Europe and Japan representing two-thirds of world product, and with China's dramatic growth likely to make it the fourth big player. On this economic board, the United States is not a hegemon, and must often bargain as an equal with Europe.

The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations that cross borders outside government control. This realm includes actors as diverse as bankers electronically transferring sums larger than most national budgets at one extreme, and terrorists transferring weapons or hackers disrupting Internet operations at the other. On this bottom board, power is widely dispersed, and it makes no sense to speak of uni-polarity, multi-polarity or hegemony. Those who recommend a hegemonic American foreign policy based on such traditional descriptions of American power are relying on woefully inadequate analysis. When you are in a three-dimensional game, you will lose if you focus only on the top board and fail to notice the other boards and the vertical connections among them.

A shrinking and merging world

Because of its leading position in the information revolution and its past investment in traditional power resources, the United States will probably remain the world's most powerful single country well into this new century. While potential coalitions to check American power could be created, it is unlikely that they would become firm alliances unless the United States handles its hard coercive power in an overbearing unilateral manner that undermines its soft or attractive power—the important ability to get others to want what you want.

As Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, has written, "Unlike centuries past, when war was the great arbiter, today the most interesting types of power do not come out of the barrel of a gun." Today there is a much bigger payoff in "getting others to want what you want", and that has to do with cultural attraction and ideology, along with agenda-setting and economic incentives for co-operation. Soft power is particularly important in dealing with issues arising from the bottom chessboard of transnational relations.

The real challenges to American power are coming on cat's feet in the night and, ironically, the temptation to unilateralism may ultimately weaken the United States. The contemporary information revolution and the globalization that goes with it are transforming and shrinking the world. At the beginning of this new century, these two forces have combined to increase American power. But, with time, technology will spread to other countries and peoples, and America's relative pre-eminence will diminish.

For example, today the American twentieth of the global population represents more than half the Internet. In a decade or two, Chinese will probably be the dominant language of the Internet. It will not dethrone English as a lingua franca, but at some point in the future the Asian cyber-community and economy will loom larger than the American.

Even more important, the information revolution is creating virtual communities and networks that cut across national borders. Transnational corporations and non-governmental actors (terrorists included) will play larger roles. Many of these organizations will have soft power of their own as they attract citizens into coalitions that cut across national boundaries. It is worth noting that, in the 1990s, a coalition based on NGOs created a landmines treaty against the opposition of the strongest bureaucracy in the strongest country.

September 11th was a terrible symptom of the deeper changes that were already occurring in the world. Technology has been diffusing power away from governments, and empowering individuals and groups to play roles in world politics—including wreaking massive destruction—which were once reserved to governments. Privatization has been increasing, and terrorism is the privatization of war. Globalization is shrinking distance, and events in faraway places, like Afghanistan, can have a great impact on American lives.

At the end of the cold war, many observers were haunted by the spectre of the return of American isolationism. But in addition to the historic debate between isolationists and internationalists, there was a split within the internationalist camp between unilateralists and multilateralists. Some, like the columnist Charles Krauthammer, urge a "new unilateralism" whereby the United States refuses to play the role of "docile international citizen" and unashamedly pursues its own ends. They speak of a uni-polar world because of America's unequalled military power. But military power alone cannot produce the outcomes Americans want on many of the issues that matter to their safety and prosperity.

As an assistant secretary of defense in 1994-95, I would be the last to deny the importance of military security. It is like oxygen. Without it, all else pales. America's military power is essential to global stability and an essential part of the response to terrorism. But the metaphor of war should not blind us to the fact that suppressing terrorism will take years of patient, unspectacular civilian co-operation with other countries. The military success in Afghanistan dealt with the easiest part of the problem, and al-Qaeda retains cells in some 50 countries. Rather than proving the unilateralists' point, the partial nature of the success in Afghanistan illustrates the continuing need for co-operation.

The perils of going alone

The problem for Americans in the 21st century is that more and more things fall outside the control of even the most powerful state. Although the United States does well on the traditional measures, there is increasingly more going on in the world that those measures fail to capture. Under the influence of the information revolution and globalization, world politics is changing in a way that means Americans cannot achieve all their international goals by acting alone. For example, international financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the co-operation of others to ensure it. Global climate change too will affect Americans' quality of life, but the United States cannot manage the problem alone. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, America must mobilize international coalitions to address shared threats and challenges.

The barbarian threat

In light of these new circumstances, how should the only superpower guide its foreign policy in a global information age? Some Americans are tempted to believe that the United States could reduce its vulnerability if it withdrew troops, curtailed alliances and followed a more isolationist foreign policy. But isolationism would not remove the vulnerability. The terrorists who struck on September 11th were not only dedicated to reducing American power, but wanted to break down what America stands for. Even if the United States had a weaker foreign policy, such groups would resent the power of the American economy which would still reach well beyond its shores. American corporations and citizens represent global capitalism, which some see as anathema.

Moreover, American popular culture has a global reach regardless of what the government does. There is no escaping the influence of Hollywood, CNN and the Internet. American films and television express freedom, individualism and change, but also sex and violence. Generally, the global reach of American culture helps to enhance America's soft power. But not, of course, with everyone. Individualism and liberties are attractive to many people but repulsive to some, particularly fundamentalists. American feminism, open sexuality and individual choices are profoundly subversive of patriarchal societies. But those hard nuggets of opposition are unlikely to catalyze broad hatred unless the United States abandons its values and pursues arrogant and overbearing policies that let the extremists appeal to the majority in the middle.

On the other hand, those who look at the American preponderance, see an empire, and urge unilateralism, risk an arrogance that alienates America's friends. Granted, there are few pure multilateralists in practice, and multilateralism can be used by smaller states to tie the United States down like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, but this does not mean that a multilateral approach is not generally in America's interests. By embedding its policies in a multilateral framework, the United States can make its disproportionate power more legitimate and acceptable to others. No large power can afford to be purely multilateralist, but that should be the starting point for policy. And when that great power defines its national interests broadly to include global interests, some degree of unilateralism is more likely to be acceptable. Such an approach will be crucial to the longevity of American power.

At the moment, the United States is unlikely to face a challenge to its pre-eminence from other states unless it acts so arrogantly that it helps the others to overcome their built-in limitations. The greater challenge for the United States will be to learn how to work with other countries to control more effectively the non-state actors that will increasingly share the stage with nation-states. How to control the bottom chessboard in a three-dimensional game, and how to make hard and soft power reinforce each other are the key foreign policy challenges. As Henry Kissinger has argued, the test of history for this generation of American leaders will be whether they can turn the current predominant power into an international consensus and widely-accepted norms that will be consistent with American values and interests as America's dominance ebbs later in the century. And that cannot be done unilaterally.

Rome succumbed not to the rise of a new empire, but to internal decay and a death of a thousand cuts from various barbarian groups. While internal decay is always possible, none of the commonly cited trends seem to point strongly in that direction at this time. Moreover, to the extent it pays attention, the American public is often realistic about the limits of their country's power. Nearly two-thirds of those polled oppose, in principle, the United States acting alone overseas without the support of other countries. The American public seems to have an intuitive sense for soft power, even if the term is unfamiliar.

On the other hand, it is harder to exclude the barbarians. The dramatically decreased cost of communication, the rise of transnational domains (including the Internet) that cut across borders, and the "democratization" of technology that puts massive destructive power into the hands of groups and individuals, all suggest dimensions that are historically new. In the last century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao needed the power of the state to wreak great evil. As the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security observed last year, "Such men and women in the 21st century will be less bound than those of the 20th by the limits of the state, and less obliged to gain industrial capabilities in order to wreak havoc... Clearly the threshold for small groups or even individuals to inflict massive damage on those they take to be their enemies is falling dramatically."

Since this is so, homeland defense takes on a new importance and a new meaning. If such groups were to obtain nuclear materials and produce a series of events involving great destruction or great disruption of society, American attitudes might change dramatically, though the direction of the change is difficult to predict. Faced with such a threat, a certain degree of unilateral action, such as the war in Afghanistan, is justified if it brings global benefits. After all, the British navy reduced the scourge of piracy well before international conventions were signed in the middle of the 19th century.

Number one, but...

The United States is well placed to remain the leading power in world politics well into the 21st century. This prognosis depends upon assumptions that can be spelled out. For example, it assumes that the American economy and society will remain robust and not decay; that the United States will maintain its military strength, but not become over-militarized; that Americans will not become so unilateral and arrogant in their strength that they squander the nation's considerable fund of soft power; that there will not be some catastrophic series of events that profoundly transforms American attitudes in an isolationist direction; and that Americans will define their national interest in a broad and far-sighted way that incorporates global interests. Each of these assumptions can be questioned, but they currently seem more plausible than their alternatives.

If the assumptions hold, America will remain number one. But number one "ain't gonna be what it used to be." The information revolution, technological change and globalization will not replace the nation-state but will continue to complicate the actors and issues in world politics. The paradox of American power in the 21st century is that the largest power since Rome cannot achieve its objectives unilaterally in a global information age.

The battle in east Afghanistan is winding down, and President Bush has offered to train other governments for the second stage in the war on terrorism. Though the American military officials assure us that much remains to be done in Afghanistan, the lessons of the campaign are already being drawn. And, before they become engraved in conventional wisdom, we should distinguish the accurate lessons from the misleading ones.

Most important, in an age of globalization, the United States cannot ignore problems in distant regions. During the Cold War, we thought Afghanistan important enough to support its struggle against the Soviet invasion. During the 1990s, to the extent that we noticed the deteriorating conditions, we felt it was not our affair. Yet we learned on Sept. 11 that events in poor countries half way around the world can do us great harm. Our military success in Afghanistan has shown clearly to any state ready to support terrorism that this is no longer a safe option.

Terrorism is to this century what piracy was to an earlier era when some governments gave pirates and privateers safe harbor to earn revenues or harass their enemies. In this era, some states have harbored terrorists in order to attack their enemies or because they were too weak to control powerful fanatical groups.

For too long our country simply looked the other way on the mistaken assumption that such alliances would have little world consequence. The United States and its allies must consistently condemn state support for terrorism and use the stick of the Afghanistan campaign to demonstrate the consequences that can befall these states.

The success to date in Afghanistan also shows that force can be used effectively and with discrimination even in difficult settings. Although there were civilian casualties, the combination of US Special Forces on the ground and precision air power proved to be a powerful one.

On the other hand, we would be mistaken if we concluded that the Afghanistan formula can fit all sizes and situations. The Northern Alliance provided important proxy forces already on the scene, and without them, air power would not have been sufficient.

Indeed, some military critics believe that the United States failure to insert more of its own ground forces led to the failure to capture Al Qaeda fighters in the battle of the Tora Bora caves. We also have to realize that the last act in Afghanistan is far from over, and more outside forces will be needed to keep the peace if our success is not to erode.

Perhaps the most dangerous lesson learned is by those in the administration and outside commentators who believe that Afghanistan shows that unilateralism works.

It is true that the United States accomplished the military tasks with little help from allies except Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Britain. But the lesson is misleading because it implies that there is a purely military solution to the war on terrorism.

According to the CIA, while the fighting in Afghanistan toppled the Taliban government, it killed or captured less than a quarter to a third of the Al Qaeda network.

The military success in Afghanistan dealt with the tip of the iceberg of terrorist threats. Al Qaeda retains cells in some 50 countries, few susceptible to military solutions. We are not about to bomb Rome, Hamburg, or Jakarta.

And Al Qaeda is not the only transnational terrorist organization. Suppressing terrorism will take years of patient international civilian cooperation involving intelligence sharing, police work, tracing financial flows, customs and immigration. Rather than proving the unilateralists' point, the partial success in Afghanistan illustrates the continuing need for international cooperation.

Sept. 11 was a terrible symptom of deeper changes occurring in the world. Technology has been diffusing power away from governments and empowering individuals and groups. With the use of desktop computers and the Internet, terrorist networks can now exchange high-tech secrets and coordinate complex campaigns across continents that only governments could conduct 20 years ago.

Privatization has been increasing, and terrorism is the privatization of war. Nor is terrorism the only issue. Many other important problems that can cause great harm&madash;such as international financial instability, global climate change, or the spread of diseases—are inherently multilateral.

The ultimate lesson of Afghanistan is that the United States is so large that these crucial problems cannot be solved without us, but we are not large enough to solve them alone.

What role should America play in the world? What key challenges face us in the century to come, and how should we define our national interests? These questions have been given electrifying new significance in the wake of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

Not since Rome has any nation had so much economic, cultural, and military power, but that power is still not enough to solve global problems like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction without involving other nations. In The Paradox of American Power, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., focuses on the rise of these and other new challenges and explains clearly why America must adopt a more cooperative engagement with the rest of the world.

The threat of terrorism, Nye argues, is merely the most alarming example of why we must engage in constructive relations with other nations weak and strong. Now more than ever, as technology spreads and non-governmental organizations ranging from transnational corporations to terrorists increase their power, American leadership must reorient itself toward the global community. Further, for many key issues—from international financial stability to drug smuggling and global climate change to terrorism—military power alone cannot ensure success and at times may undermine rather than enhance our objectives. Nye argues convincingly that in the coming century the U.S. will rely less on our military might and more on the power that derives from the appeal of our culture, values and institutions, what he calls our "soft power." But this soft power cannot flourish in a climate in which the U.S. is viewed as selfish and motivated only by self-interest.

The Paradox of American Power contains the essential roadmap for maintaining America's power and reducing its vulnerability in the years to come. Sure to be controversial, it's a must read for anyone wishing to understand the complicated world in which we suddenly find ourselves.

Five years ago, with James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, I headed a government study that found a lack of preparedness to face catastrophic terrorism. Our warnings and those of similar groups went largely unheeded. On Sept. 11, complacency was wiped away, but the fragmented bureaucratic structure and procedures of our government remain a barrier to action, despite President Bush's decision to name Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania to head a new Office of Homeland Defense.

By using the rhetoric of war to frame our response to the terror attacks, President Bush has marshaled the public's patriotism and persuaded Congress to provide financing. But the danger in the rhetoric is that the new office may be structured like a military organization.

There are many types of terrorism and many kinds of terrorist weapons. Even if we succeed in eliminating Osama bin Laden, we have to remember that Timothy McVeigh was home-grown. And as we succeed in battening down the cockpits to prevent civilian aircraft being used again as giant cruise missiles, terrorists will be exploring other vulnerabilities in our open society and investigating even more devastating weapons.

Fortunately, nuclear and biological weapons are not as easy to make as popular fiction suggests, but there have been reports that Mr. bin Laden and others have tried to purchase stolen nuclear weapons from the former Soviet inventory. We also know that a few years ago the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult killed people with both chemical and biological agents.

Suppressing terrorism is very different from a military campaign. It requires continuous, patient, undramatic civilian work and close cooperation with other countries. And it requires coordination within our government.

The C.I.A. and F.B.I. must improve their ability to work together on detection and must reconcile their different authorities and programs in intelligence and law enforcement. The F.B.I., the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Defense Department and other agencies must improve their cooperation. Because of poor coordination, two suspects were able to enter this country even after their names had been placed on a watch list, and the jet fighters that scrambled after the Federal Aviation Administration notification of the hijackings arrived too late.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has to work with local governments on domestic responses. New federally funded research and development programs are needed to address each phase of a crisis, as well as to accelerate new technologies and devise special training and testing exercises.

It would be a mistake if the Office of Homeland Defense merely added another layer of bureaucracy. Instead, Governor Ridge should head a committee of deputy secretaries from the agencies with control over budgets and programs involved with terrorism defense. He should create a small staff that works closely with the Office of Management and Budget to monitor plans to be carried out by existing agencies.

His office should be supported by new research corporations created to deal with terrorism, as the RAND corporation was created in the cold war to deal with the nuclear threat. These groups should not be bound by the rigidities and inadequate salaries of the federal bureaucracy. Their independence should allow them to plan an antiterror system that can find gaps and overlaps in government agencies' antiterror efforts and examine weaknesses in private systems like computer networks.

Planners should conduct regular exercises with teams simulating terrorists and defenders, trying to outsmart each other. Had we done this for our airport security system, we might have realized that it was designed to detect guns and bombs but not to stop suicide pilots armed with knives and box cutters.

As recently as last spring, a commission on national security headed by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman also warned of our lack of preparedness. Sadly, the commissioners were right. Now we must organize ourselves effectively to combat terrorism.