TED Talks-Joseph Nye on global power shifts

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Transcript:


I'm going to talk to youabout power in this 21st century.And basically, what I'd like to tell youis that power is changing,and there are two types of changesI want to discuss.One is power transition,which is change of power amongst states.And there the simple version of the messageis it's moving from West to East.The other is power diffusion,the way power is movingfrom all states West or Eastto non-state actors.Those two thingsare the huge shifts of powerin our century.And I want to tell you about them each separatelyand then how they interactand why, in the end, there may be some good news.

When we talk about power transition,we often talk about the rise of Asia.It really should be calledthe recovery or return of Asia.If we looked at the worldin 1800,you'd find that more than half of the world's peoplelived in Asiaand they made more than half the world's product.Now fast forward to 1900:half the world's people -- more than half -- still live in Asia,but they're now makingonly a fifth of the world's product.What happened? The Industrial Revolution,which meant that all of a sudden,Europe and Americabecame the dominant center of the world.What we're going to see in the 21st centuryis Asia gradually returningto being more than half of the world's populationand more than half of the world's product.That's important and it's an important shift.But let me tell you a little bit aboutthe other shift that I'm talking about,which is power diffusion.

To understand power diffusionput this in your mind:computing and communications costshave fallen a thousandfoldbetween 1970and the beginning of this century.Now that's a big abstract number.But to make it more real,if the price of an automobilehad fallen as rapidlyas the price of computing power,you could buy a car todayfor five dollars.Now when the price of any technologydeclines that dramatically,the barriers to entry go down.Anybody can play in the game.So in 1970,if you wanted to communicatefrom Oxford to Johannesburgto New Delhito Brasiliaand anywhere simultaneously,you could do it.The technology was there.But to be able to do it,you had to be very rich --a government, a multinational corporation,maybe the Catholic Church --but you had to be pretty wealthy.Now, anybody has that capacity,which previously was restricted by pricejust to a few actors.If they have the price of entry into an Internet cafe --the last time I looked, it was something like a pound an hour --and if you have Skype, it's free.So capabilitiesthat were once restrictedare now available to everyone.And what that means

is not that the age of the State is over.The State still matters.But the stage is crowded.The State's not alone. There are many, many actors.Some of that's good:Oxfam,a great non-governmental actor.Some of it's bad:Al Qaeda, another non-governmental actor.But think of what it doesto how we think in traditional terms and concepts.We think in terms of warand interstate war.And you can think back to 1941when the government of Japanattacked the United States at Pearl Harbor.It's worth noticingthat a non-state actorattacking the United States in 2001killed more Americansthan the government of Japan did in 1941.You might think of thatas the privatization of war.So we're seeing a great changein terms of diffusion of power.

Now the problem isthat we're not thinking about it in very innovative ways.So let me step backand ask: what's power?Power is simple the abilityto affect othersto get the outcomes you want,and you can do it in three ways.You can do it with threatsof coercion, "sticks,"you can do it with payments,"carrots,"or you can do it by getting othersto want what you want.And that ability to get others to want what you want,to get the outcomes you wantwithout coercion or payment,is what I call soft power.And that soft power has been much neglectedand much misunderstood,and yet it's tremendously important.Indeed, if you can learnto use more soft power,you can save a loton carrots and sticks.Traditionally, the way people thought about powerwas primarily in terms of military power.For example, the great Oxford historianwho taught here at this university, A.J.P. Taylor,defined a great poweras a country able to prevail in war.But we need a new narrativeif we're to understand power in the 21st century.It's not just prevailing at war,though war still persists.It's not whose army wins;it's also whose story wins.And we have to think much more in terms of narrativesand whose narrative is going to be effective.

Now let me go backto the questionof power transitionbetween statesand what's happening there.the narratives that we use nowtend to be the rise and fallof the great powers.And the current narrative is all aboutthe rise of Chinaand the decline of the United States.Indeed, with the 2008 financial crisis,many people said this was the beginning of the end of American power.The tectonic platesof world politics were shifting.And president Medvedev of Russia, for example,pronounced in 2008this was the beginning of the endof United States power.But in fact,this metaphor of declineis often very misleading.If you look at history, in recent history,you'll see the cycles of beliefin American declinecome and go every 10 or 15 years or so.In 1958,after the Soviets put up Sputnik,it was "That's the end of America."In 1973, with the oil embargoand the closing of the gold window,that was the end of America.In the 1980s,as America went through a transition in the Reagan period,between the rust belt economy of the midwestto the Silicon Valley economy of California,that was the end of America.But in fact, what we've seenis none of those were true.Indeed, people were over-enthusiasticin the early 2000s,thinking America could do anything,which led us into some disastrousforeign policy adventures,and now we're back to decline again.

The moral of this storyis all these narratives about rise and fall and declinetell us a lot more about psychologythan they do about reality.If we try to focus on the reality,then what we need to focus onis what's really happeningin terms of China and the United States.Goldman Sachs has projectedthat China, the Chinese economy,will surpass that of the U.S.by 2027.So we've got, what,17 more years to go or sobefore China's bigger.Now someday, with a billion point three people getting richer,they are going to be bigger than the United States.But be very careful about these projectionssuch as the Goldman Sachs projectionas though that gives you an accurate pictureof power transition in this century.Let me mention three reasons why it's too simple.First of all, it's a linear projection.You know, everything says,here's the growth rate of China, here's the growth rate of the U.S.,here it goes -- straight line.History is not linear.There are often bumps along the road, accidents along the way.The second thing isthat the Chinese economypasses the U.S. economy in, let's say, 2030,which it may it,that will be a measure of total economic size,but not of per capita income --won't tell you about the composition of the economy.China still has large areasof underdevelopmentand per capita income is a better measureof the sophistication of the economy.And that the Chinese won't catch up or pass the Americansuntil somewhere in the latter part,after 2050, of this century.

The other point that's worth noticingis how one-dimensionalthis projection is.You know, it looks at economic powermeasured by GDP.Doesn't tell you much about military power,doesn't tell you very much about soft power.It's all very one-dimensional.And also, when we think about the rise of Asia,or return of Asiaas I called it a little bit earlier,it's worth remembering Asia's not one thing.If you're sitting in Japan,or in New Delhi,or in Hanoi,your view of the rise of Chinais a little different than if you're sitting in Beijing.Indeed, one of the advantagesthat the Americans will havein terms of power in Asiais all those countrieswant an American insurance policyagainst the rise of China.It's as though Mexico and Canadawere hostile neighbors to the United States,which they're not.So these simple projectionsof the Goldman Sachs typeare not telling us what we need to knowabout power transition.

But you might ask, well so what in any case?Why does it matter? Who cares?Is this just a gamethat diplomats and academics play?The answer is it matters quite a lot.Because, if you believe in declineand you get the answers wrong on this,the facts, not the myths,you may have policies which are very dangerous.Let me give you an example from history.The Peloponnesian Warwas the great conflictin which the Greek city state system tore itself aparttwo and a half millennia ago.What caused it?Thucydides, the great historian of the the Peloponnesian War,said it was the rise in the power of Athensand the fear it created in Sparta.Notice both halves of that explanation.

Many people arguethat the 21st century is going to repeat the 20th century,in which World War One,the great conflagration in which the European state systemtore itself apartand destroyed its centrality in the world,that that was caused bythe rise in the power of Germanyand the fear it created in Britain.So there are people who are telling usthis is going to be reproduced today,that what we're going to seeis the same thing now in this century.No, I think that's wrong.It's bad history.For one thing, Germany had surpassed Britainin industrial strength by 1900.And as I said earlier,China has not passed the United States.But also, if you have this beliefand it creates a sense of fear,it leads to overreaction.And the greatest danger we haveof managing this power transitionof the shift toward the East is fear.To paraphrase Franklin Rooseveltfrom a different context,the greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself.We don't have to fear the rise of Chinaor the return of Asia.And if we have policiesin which we take itin that larger historical perspective,we're going to be ableto manage this process.

Let me say a word nowabout the distribution of powerand how it relates to power diffusionand then pull these two types together.If you ask how is power distributed in the world today,it's distributed much likea three-dimensional chess game.Top board:military power among states.The United States is the only superpower,and it's likely to remain that wayfor two or three decades.China's not going to replace the U.S. on this military board.Middle board of this three-dimensional chess game:economic power among states.Power is multi-polar.There are balancers --the U.S., Europe,China, Japancan balance each other.The bottom board of this three-dimensional,the board of transnational relations,things that cross borders outside the control of governments,things like climate change, drug trade,financial flows,pandemics,all these things that cross bordersoutside the control of governments,there nobody's in charge.It makes no sense to call this unipolaror multi-polar.Power is chaotically distributed.And the only way you can solve these problems --and this is where many greatest challengesare coming in this century --is through cooperation,through working together,which means that soft power becomes more important,that ability to organize networksto deal with these kinds of problemsand to be able to get cooperation.

Another way of putting itis that as we think of power in the 21st century,we want to get away from the ideathat power's always zero sum --my gain is your loss and vice versa.Power can also be positive sum,where your gain can be my gain.If China develops greater energy securityand greater capacityto deal with its problems of carbon emissions,that's good for usas well as good for Chinaas well as good for everybody else.So empowering China to deal with its own problems of carbonis good for everybody,and it's not a zero sum, I win, you lose.It's one in which we can all gain.So as we think about powerin this century,we want to get away from this viewthat it's all I win, you lose.Now I don't mean to be Pollyannaish about this.Wars persist. Power persists.Military power is important.Keeping balances is important.All this still persists.Hard power is there,and it will remain.But unless you learn how to mixhard power with soft powerinto strategies that I call smart power,you're not going to deal with the new kinds of problemsthat we're facing.

So the key question that we need to think about as we look at thisis how do we work togetherto produce global public goods,things from which all of us can benefit?How do we define our national interestsso that it's not just zero sum,but positive sum.In that sense, if we define our interests,for example, for the United Statesthe way Britain defined its interests in the 19th century,keeping an open trading system,keeping a monetary stability, keeping freedom of the seas --those were good for Britain,they were good for others as well.And in the 21st century, you have to do an analog to that.How do we produce global public goods,which are good for us,but good for everyone at the same time?And that's going to be the good news dimensionof what we need to think aboutas we think of power in the 21st century.

There are ways to define our interestsin which, while protecting ourselves with hard power,we can organize with others in networksto produce, not only public goods,but ways that will enhance our soft power.So if one looks at the statementsthat have been made about this,I am impressed that when Hillary Clintondescribed the foreign policyof the Obama administration,she said that the foreign policy of the Obama administrationwas going to be smart power,as she put it, "using all the toolsin our foreign policy tool box."And if we're going to dealwith these two great power shifts that I've described,the power shift represented by transition among states,the power shift representedby diffusion of power away from all states,we're going to have to develop a new narrative of powerin which we combine hard and soft powerinto strategies of smart power.And that's the good news I have. We can do that.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)