*Originally published between 2013-19 and preserved as part of our archive project. E-International Relations is free to read. We rely on reader support to make this possible.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., is  University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and earned a PhD in political science from Harvard. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and Deputy Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers. His most recent book, Is the American Century Over? published in March 2015.

Where do you see the most exciting research and debates happening in your field?

I am particularly interested in efforts to do comparative historical case studies and I think the trend and the fashion now is for large-N studies or fancy mathematical modelling. However, I think that there’s still a great deal of work that can be done on looking at history but looking at history not just from a purely historian’s point of view but from the point of view of a political scientist. I try to make generalisations, so that to me is the methodological approach that I prefer.

How has the way that you understand the world changed over time and what (or who) has prompted the most significant shifts in your thinking?

I think probably the most important change in the world has been the development of the internet and particularly with the web becoming the sub-stratum for political and economic activities over the last twenty years, this has created a new interdependence and along with that a vulnerability which has given rise to a totally different role for non-state actors. In my book on ‘The Future of Power’ I have a chapter on cyber power and one of the most interesting things there is the diffusion of power from states to non-state actors doesn’t mean equality of states and non-state actors. It mean that no-less the distance between a state and a non-state actor has diminished considerably. I don’t know if you associate that with any one person. I suppose if one were to look at people you could cite the traditional leaders like Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or so forth but what I’m describing is something that’s not associated with a particular person but with a trend and that really to my mind has changed the world.

In your most recent book, Is the American Century Over? you determine the power and influence of a nation using three metrics: economic power, military power and soft power. From these metrics, how do you define when the United States achieved pre-eminence and the American Century began?

The United States becomes the largest economy in the world at the end of the 19th century but it doesn’t become the most central player in terms of the global balance of power until after 1945, after World War II, because after World War I what you find is that though the United States tipped the balance in the outcome of World War I, it didn’t stay involved to the extent that it became the central player in the global balance of power. Just being the largest economy is not in and of itself the measure of being the most powerful country. The period of the 1920s and 1930s, in which the United States followed a policy of isolationism from European balance of power, allowed Hitler in Europe to accumulate military power in Japan, to accumulate military power in the Far East and it wasn’t until the United States entered World War II that we really became central to the global balance of power. This is why I take the American era not from when the United States became the largest economy but from when it became the central player in the global balance of power and that really is World War II.

What........

© E-International