Thomas Wright, an expert on international relations, says the “great dramas of the 21st century will play out in Asia rather than Europe.”

Mr. Wright is the executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and previously served as the senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security. I interviewed Mr. Wright about soft power in Asia, rising powers and international institutions.

He says that China has been a “responsible power but its rise makes its neighbors nervous” and as long as East Asian countries “want a significant US presence in the region the United States will remain a major Asian power.” With the global financial crisis, the “US led international order is facing the first great internally induced crisis in its history.” While the US-China relationship is “incredibly important” in addressing transnational threats, the “vital thing is to disaggregate the various challenges and tailor multilateral solutions that suit each.”

The recent survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on Soft Power in Asia found that the United States “is the region’s undisputed soft-power leader.” Despite China’s rise and perceived decline in America’s influence, the United States still ranked above China in soft power. Are you surprised by these findings? What is the significance of the relative soft powers in Asia?

I am personally not surprised by these findings although they do go against the conventional wisdom. The United States has long played a constructive role in Asia.  It supports the status quo, and is democratic, open and far enough away not to be threatening. On the other hand the rise of China introduces a great unknown into regional politics. China has been a responsible power but its rise makes its neighbors nervous.

Soft power in East Asia matters because it tells us about what countries in the region want and as long as they want a significant US presence in the region the United States will remain a major Asian power.

Some argue that hard power is easier to measure than soft power. Do you agree? How can soft power be effectively evaluated?

It is true that hard power is easier to measure than soft power but only to a certain degree. While it is obviously easier to count tanks and aircraft carriers than measure the power of attraction we also know from wars like Iraq and coercive diplomacy like US-North Korea relations, that it is often difficult to predict how effective the instruments of hard power will be once they are employed.

To measure the soft power of the four major powers in Asia, the Chicago Council’s survey examined the attractiveness of different national cultures and values, the effectiveness of nations as regional leaders and problem-solvers, their attractiveness as trade partners, levels of human capital, the emergence of regional identities, as well as perceptions of growing economic and political integration in East Asia and the impact this has on underlying regional tensions.

You commented that the “center of gravity in international politics is moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” What are the implications for US foreign policy?

The implications are enormous because it implies that the great dramas of the 21st century will play out in Asia rather than Europe. Let me just focus on two implications that don’t get as much attention as they should.

The first has to do with strategic culture. The United States is used to great power politics in the Atlantic area and most US foreign policy experts have learned their trade from studying that experience. The United States must be careful not to assume that the lessons learned from that are transferable to Asia. India-China-Japan relations will not necessarily play out like Germany-France-Britain relations in the 19th century. So it will be important for the US foreign policy community to appreciate and understand the specific context of great power relations in the 21st century. Given that strategic misunderstanding and misperceptions can heighten the risk of conflict, it is tremendously important that America gets this right.

The second has to do with worse case scenarios. East Asia is probably the only place on the planet where one could imagine a major war or struggle on a par with the conflicts of the 20th century. Regional multipolarity, volatility in economics, rising nationalisms, historic animosities and grievances, legitimate differences of interests and dramatic power transitions make East Asia unique in the modern world. It falls to the United States, as the world’s strongest power and as a Pacific nation, to take the lead in managing this situation, reassuring all nations, dissuading and deterring aggression and guiding them to a mutually beneficial future. This may be America’s greatest foreign policy challenge of the next half century.

How important is the bilateral relationship between the United States and China for addressing transnational threats (climate change, nuclear proliferation, etc.)?

The US-China relationship is incredibly important in a wide range of areas. One is preserving peace and stability in East Asia. Another is the global economy and unwinding the massive financial imbalances that may have contributed to the international financial crisis. And then there are transnational threats although we should be careful not to lump them all in together. The US-China relationship will determine whether or not we are successful in tackling climate change although it may be more peripheral to non-proliferation where relations with Russia and Pakistan are probably more important. The vital thing is to disaggregate the various challenges and tailor multilateral solutions that suit each.

You have written several pieces on rising powers and international institutions. Last year, in a paper with G. John Ikenberry, you argued that the global order is “easier to join and harder to overturn.” In a recent brief for the Stanley Foundation, you wrote that “reform of international institutions should bring about more effective international cooperation on critical challenges in a way that does not inadvertently worsen tensions with other states.” What are your impressions of the recent G20 summit in London?

The G20 summit in London went better than expected but it was still not good enough. The US led international order is facing the first great internally induced crisis in its history. The global economy may be in a tailspin. Meanwhile, fundamental problems, like the financial imbalances between the United States and China, went ignored at the G20 as leaders focused on what united them. This is not the time to be papering over differences. We should be identifying where major countries disagree on important matters and then encouraging intensive diplomacy to reach some understanding about the path forward. This will probably mean multiple and flexible multilateral arrangements, some with a very small number of members, that allow a deepening of cooperation that ultimately works to the benefits of all countries.

Jonathan Holslag, an expert on China’s foreign policy, says that Asia will be the “most dramatic theater” for rivalry between great powers. Mr. Holslag is the head of research for the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies and I interviewed him about the changing global balance of power and China’s rise.

He argues that “America is declining” because others are gaining relative strength. “Growing economic power brings growing ambitions and interests,” but China “does not necessarily want to challenge America.”

You recently wrote that the United States is a “declining power.” How will America’s fall influence US policy?

To decline is obviously one of these dramatic verbs with many connotations. Some students argue that decline starts as soon as growth comes to a halt. Others contend that states can postpone decline for years, even decades, if only they succeed to set rules that are acceptable for other countries without having to invest a lot in enforcing them, or to maintain primacy in one sector of power. You can have a decline because other states are revisionist, or because the dominant power fails to maintain the status quo.

America is declining because other powers are relatively strengthening their capabilities faster, and convert these in influence. This is a matter of economic development, certainly in the case of China. The PRC is a revisionist power by default: it does not necessarily want to challenge America, but it does so, simply because it is more effective in converting its resources into growth. Other states that do not achieve the comprehensive national growth as China does, are bolstering their capacity to apply specific pockets of capabilities for diplomatic use: energy and selective military force in the case of Russia and geopolitical primacy in the case of India.

The impact of this evolution is aggravated because Washington has failed to pursue an effective status-quo strategy. Especially in the last eight years or so, it has wielded its power as if it was a vibrant young superpower. Consequently, it has been bearing more costs than it can afford, and it has done so without accumulating new capabilities. Overstretch is now tangible in all dimensions of its power: militarily, economically, politically, etc.

At such a critical juncture a global power has three options: to engage its main threats, to withdraw or to embark on a cost-effective strategy that aims at rejuvenation and regaining capabilities. The latter policy would be characterized by military restraint, diplomatic prudence and economic ambition.

President Obama’s policy bears some characteristics of this constructive realism. If he succeeds to promote more financial austerity, triggers a green economic revolution and he does so before others do, America has a chance to regain the economic assets that are needed to sustain its primacy among other powers.

Diplomatically, Washington will temper its unilateralism, but while doing so it will experience more difficulties to embed its policies in solid alliances. The strong players will obviously be more confident to protect their own national interests and raise the costs for making concessions to America. But smaller countries too will have more maneuverability. Instead of exclusively relying on the US as a diplomatic partner or offshore balancer, they will try to benefit as much as possible from diversifying their economic, political and military linkages.

Realism implies comparatively optimizing gains and lowering costs. This cost-effectiveness makes burden-sharing a key objective in America’s new foreign policy. But to persuade powers like China to give up free riding, it will have to be prepared to yield authority. Even when it does not like it, it will have to be more sensitive to spheres of influence and learn to live with harsher power plays in multilateral institutions.

The challenge is thus to maintain a balance between giving more scope to other powers on the one hand, and using the strategic brake for self-improvement and rebuilding its powerbase on the other.

Do you think the world’s rising powers – including Brazil, Russia, India and China – will increasingly play a more prominent role in international affairs and global security?

Growing economic power brings growing ambitions and interests. This will be felt at the regional level first, but there are already indications that particularly China is aiming at securing its economic stakes globally. This will be a creeping, but determined expansion of power projection. The question is whether this spillover from economic ambitions into the field of security will be benign and cooperative.

With new trading states boosting their economic diplomacy, we risk slipping into a double security dilemma. On the one hand, states like China will consider access to consumer markets and natural resources as a matter of national security, and actively back up their commercial ventures with political power. This already brings the risk of mercantilist tit-for-tat games.

But there is more. If one country, again probably China, succeeds to make more headway than others, there is a chance that countries like India and Russia start to fear that this will alter the overall balance of power, and this would make strategic competition inevitable.

Once more, this is not because of the fact that Beijing seeks to confront them, but simply because of asymmetric gains cause distrust. The impact of this security dilemma is getting larger and larger in places like Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, where predatory regimes are able to play their new partners off against each other.

Even when there is an objective need for working together to stabilize these regions, it is the tragedy of great power politics that such interdependence does not lead to long-term cooperation, and America too will not escape from these dynamics.

Many US and European officials express desire for China to become a “responsible player” in the international system. How will China assume a leadership role? How will this impact world order?

The question is of course who defines the responsibilities. China finds that its policies are perfectly responsible according to its own interests. There is an outspoken incongruence between Europe’s expectation that normative convergence will help to allow both sides to cope with divergent interests; while China finds that they should try to define key joint interests, to circumvent differences over norms. America’s new realism seems to match more with this Chinese pragmatism, while Europe has difficulties to come to grips with it. We are thus likely to see that both sides of the Atlantic will be increasingly at odds over how they seek to socialize China as a responsible stakeholder.

In a recent study on China’s Africa policy we found that China is willing to adapt to external expectations under three main conditions: when its strategic interests are not harmed, when rules are not binding and when other powers do the same. We have witnessed for example that it adopted stringent measures promoted by the EU to curb the illicit diamond and ivory trade with Africa, but not the trade of mineral ores that are crucial for its industry. All in all, it tends to pursue chameleon diplomacy, adapting to different situations: pursuing sovereignist policies with autocratic regimes and reaching out to civil societies when it has to do business with democracies.

A tempting pitfall is to evaluate China’s compliance by measuring the degree to which it became a member of multilateral bodies. True, this integration facilitates its peaceful rise, but it is by no means an end of great power rivalry.  In the framework of the UN we observe that China is getting more assertive to project its own norms and principles. In the context of the WTO, China is duly complying with existing standards, but it aggressively tries to mould future rules in favor of its national interests, often tabling proposals that run against Western wishes.

I call this reverse socialization. China adapts to the form in order to influence the substance, and projecting its own ideas and values. It is not so much the acceptance of channels of interaction that matters, but the degree to which China uses them to translate its successful growth into diplomatic or normative influence. There is a serious risk that once China gets too strong within these bodies, the West will relinquish the multilateralism that it has so actively promoted.

How important will it be for China to maintain a strong relationship with the US?

The overriding need is for stability and the US key to provide in this stability. While being revisionist by default, China will do its best to mislead Washington that this is not the case. In that regard, it comes as a blessing that many China watchers evaluate China’s power with interaction-level benchmarks, rather than capabilities. As long as Beijing can continue to boost its influence, it will be glad to show itself as a constructive partner.

For the years to come, there are two major things to watch. First, it remains to be seen how much the PRC is going to stimulate domestic consumption in order to reduce its costly addiction to US consumers. Secondly, it will be a challenge for China to keep its head cool. It knows that it gets more clout and in the last few months we have seen that it is getting more vociferous in clarifying its position. While this new self-confidence is understandable for a country that is expected to finance large parts of Obama’s economic plans; it might be counterproductive as an agitated America will make less concessions or even revert to more hostile policies.

In the past, the rise and fall of superpowers led to competition and conflicts. In the future, is there potential for a major clash as the international balance of power shifts?

The best possible outcome for the coming two decades will be a new concert of great powers, tied together by the wish to maintain stability and to focus on development. For the years to come, none of them will be able to claim a new superpower status, but a concert might prove to be unsustainable because of uncertainty of each other intentions as the regional balances of powers alter, because of looming nationalism, and because of a persistent crisis in the productive sectors that elicit protectionism and fierce mercantilism. Asia will obviously be the most dramatic theatre for rivalry, whether this is stirred by the US or not.

Photo from the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies.

Travis Sharp, an expert on United States defense policy, says that China’s economic growth and military modernization are “tipping the East Asian balance of power more in Beijing’s favor.”

To gain insight into the relative hard power of states, I interviewed Mr. Sharp about US military strategies. Mr. Sharp is a military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.

He says that the United States is “leading the charge” on the international increase in defense spending, but America’s “military strategy and spending are not always driven by factors related to US security and power.” The global rise in spending is due to “perceived threats or politics.” When surveying the international security landscape, countries see “more sources of potential danger than ever before.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently proposed changes to the defense budget for fiscal year 2010. While Senator John McCain welcomed the proposal as a “major step in the right direction,” others worry that the changes are “disarming America.” What are your impressions?

The “disarming America” accusation is easily refuted by some math.

I believe Secretary Gates recommendations are pretty close to budget neutral for fiscal year 2010. As I show here, if you add the Obama administration’s proposed defense budget increase from last year ($21 billion) to Gates’s proposed reductions (I estimate $10 billion), you get approximately $31 billion in “free money” for the Obama administration to play with. But Gates also proposed around $21 billion in budget increases. When you combine those increases with the numerous personnel benefits that we can’t yet put a price tag on, you are likely in the neighborhood of $30 billion in new initiatives. So everything Gates allegedly “cut” was offset by increases for things the Obama administration believes are more important.

Call it “reform,” call it “rearrangement” – hell, call it a “modest course correction” – just don’t call it “disarming America” because it’s not. The bottom line is that President Obama is not reducing overall defense spending this year. But he is rearranging it in ways that I believe are long overdue.

You recently wrote that the Pentagon’s budget “is larger in inflation-adjusted terms than at any time since World War II.” The United States is also the world’s largest military spender, by far. Do you think this spending is necessary to maintain security? Is the spending needed to preserve America’s relative global power?

In my opinion, US military strategy and spending are not always driven by factors related to US security and power. What do I mean by that? I mean that factors other than threat and national interest, the proper criteria for defense policy decisions, distort the policymaking process and lead to less efficient (aka more expensive) outcomes. I call the purveyors of these non-strategic factors “non-strategic influencers,” and I would offer as examples members of Congress, defense contractors, inter-service rivalries and interest groups.

I believe the existence of these non-strategic influencers calls into question the premise that every dollar we spend on defense is absolutely essential for US security. Let’s be honest: a lot of things besides rational threat-based assessments go into determining how much the United States spends on defense.

Of course, non-strategic influencers are part of living in a democracy. Interestingly enough, I think less democratic countries, such as Russia and China, probably have military budgets that are purer reflections of strategic calculation than the United States. Since these countries don’t fully disclose details about their budgets, however, the United States is left with great uncertainty about their aims and must make educated guesses much of the time. These guesses, not surprisingly, tend to round up when it comes time to ask for budgetary resources.

The most obvious example of a non-strategic influencer is Congress. There can be little doubt that members of Congress often make decisions about defense spending based on what will most benefit their constituents, not what will most benefit the entire nation. I don’t begrudge them their parochialism; indeed, they were elected by a geographically-limited group of people to represent that limited group’s interests on Capitol Hill. But the addition of billions of lawmaker-inserted defense dollars each year is not done in a strategic fashion. It increases the overall budget in a way that I believe is artificial and not reflective of the threats facing the United States.

Several US officials have spoken about smart power and the need to balance hard and soft capabilities. Do you think the US should place a greater emphasis on America’s soft power?

Yes. I believe US policymakers excessively dichotomize foreign and defense policy, when in reality they should be considered as a more unified whole. I, and many others, believe we have underfunded nuclear nonproliferation, law enforcement, intelligence, border security, foreign assistance, economic development and diplomacy in recent years. I don’t believe more funding for these elements of smart power will rid the world of danger – the United States will be called on to use force in the future – but they may help prevent problems before they start. Moreover, the money required to dramatically boost funding for smart power will not even put a dent in the Pentagon budget. At risk of oversimplification, the United States can either buy one additional F-22 Raptor or pay the salaries of 2,860 new Foreign Service Officers. I think both expenditures are an investment in US security, and I feel pretty safe with the 187 Raptors we’ve already got.

Looking at the bigger picture, I believe the creeping infiltration of the American military into all aspects of US foreign policy is cause for concern. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, DOD provided four percent of overall US development aid assistance in 1998; by 2005, its share had risen to 22 percent. Besides my fears about militarizing diplomacy, the practical reality is that the US military is incapable of accomplishing everything that currently is being asked of it. From counterinsurgency to nationbuilding to reconciling tribal grievances, the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the limits of DOD’s willingness to assume any burden. The American military’s “can-do” attitude must not obscure the fact that it cannot do everything. It must prioritize what it is good at: fighting and winning the nation’s wars.

In March, the Defense Department released its most recent report on China’s military. Many in the US worry that improvements in China’s military are changing the regional balance of power. What are your thoughts?

There is no doubt that China’s economic growth – and concomitant military modernization – is tipping the East Asian balance of power more in Beijing’s favor. Newly ascendant holders of regional and international power are natural, not to be feared, and something the United States better get used to in the 21st century.

From a military strategy perspective, however, I do sometimes worry that the United States is playing right into Chinese hands. China’s military planning is based on an anti-access/area-denial (AA/AD) strategy whereby the People’s Liberation Army would be able to threaten US carriers, surface combatants, and other ships in the western Pacific as far out as the second island chain running south from Japan to New Guinea. To achieve AA/AD, China is acquiring new aircraft, submarines, and missiles, including anti-ship ballistic missiles that could threaten US carriers up to 1,200 miles away.

In light of China’s AA/DD buildup, the name of the game for the United States is long range capability. However, did you hear a lot of yelling and screaming this week about Secretary Gates’s decision to delay a new long-range (conventionally-armed) Air Force bomber? No, not even a peep. All you heard about was the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, two planes that would have problems reaching military targets in China’s interior. Not that these aircraft aren’t valuable; they certainly are. But to beat Chinese AA/AD, the United States will likely have to look at technologies like the naval unmanned combat air system, which would, as incoming Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work wrote last year, “transform a US aircraft carrier from a system with unlimited global mobility but relatively short tactical reach into a multipurpose global reconnaissance-strike platform.”

Sadly, for non-strategic influencers such as Congress and defense contractors, these types of debates are often secondary to short-term political or proprietary considerations.

Even with the international economic crisis, military spending is on the rise around the world? Why? Is there any danger the high expenditures will spur a global arms race?

When it comes to increased military spending, the United States is leading the charge. At $534 billion, President Obama’s Pentagon budget is $9 billion, or 1.7 percent, greater than the previous year’s budget after adjusting for inflation. China also announced it would increase its 2009 defense budget, up 15 percent over last year’s level. India said its increase would be a staggering 34 percent. France plans to double its domestic arms purchases to $26 billion in 2009. And Russia plans to spend $111 billion on military modernization by 2011, at which point President Dmitry Medvedev said even more accelerated “large-scale rearming” would begin.

I think it has been pretty well-documented that states increase their defense spending because of either perceived threats or politics, whether domestic or international.

On the issue of threats, I think countries surveying the global security landscape today see more sources of potential danger than ever before. From the recent ascendance of previously inward-focused countries such as China and India, to the rise of non-state actors such as Al Qaeda and pirate gangs, to the new threats emanating from cyberterrorists, to nuclear weapon and missile proliferation, today’s threats are very different from those encountered during the Cold War. Moreover, nations’ fear is easy to act upon in today’s globalized international defense market, where armaments can be obtained from various state and private sources.

On the issue of politics, having already touched on domestic non-strategic influencers previously, I’ll just briefly address the international arena. The dilemma that accompanies increased military expenditures is pretty straightforward: the more a country spends on its military, the less safe it is likely to feel because its pursuit of increased military capabilities will trigger in-kind militarization by other states. Government spending on defense is not like government spending on infrastructure, health care, or education because spending more on road signs or textbooks does not make Russia nervous, but spending more on attack submarines does.

This is the root of my problem with the “defense spending as stimulus” argument. I think Kenneth Waltz put it best: “Defense spending…is unproductive for all and unavoidable for most. Rather than increased well-being, their reward is in the maintenance of their autonomy.” The kicker, in my mind, is that every dollar we spend on defense above and beyond what is necessary to protect US security and national interests actually becomes counterproductive and threatens our autonomy due to the arms race repercussions I just outlined. The key is a balanced approach that spends whatever is required for current and future challenges but doesn’t willfully ignore the impact US defense budgets have on the calculations of other states.

Photo from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.