Asia & the Pacific

"Judging whether economic interdependence produces power requires looking at the balance of asymmetries, not just at one side of the equation. In this case, interdependence has created a "balance of financial terror" analogous to the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union never used their potential to destroy each other in a nuclear exchange."

After World War II, "trading states" seemed to be charting a new path forward. But small was not beautiful. Even great powers found themselves negotiating larger markets through economic associations with others. It's time the United States became such a power.

"As the American political system hurtles toward its quadrennial encounter with the oracle of democracy, it is worth our while to take stock of the country's place in a world beset by bewilderingly rapid change. (Heaven knows none of the candidates will bother to do this.) I want to suggest that an old yet generally neglected subject remains particularly relevant: the relationship between the size of political units and the effective scale of systems of economic production and exchange. Another way to describe this relationship is by recourse to the hoary scholarly phrase "political economy", a term of art that has unfortunately gone out of style...."

"By using its good offices to mediate conflicts in places like Northern Ireland, Morocco, and the Aegean Sea, the US has helped in shaping international order in ways that are beneficial to other nations."

This commentary comprises excerpts from a keynote speech Joseph S. Nye delivered May 26 in Tokyo at an Asahi Shimbun symposium on its 21 "Proposals for Japan's New Strategies" that ran in May 3 editions of The Asahi Shimbun and on May 23 in IHT/Asahi.

"International relations are not simply a state of anarchy. There are profound elements of hierarchy in the international system, and even authority relationships...."

"Globalization has the effect of incapacitating states as autonomous units."