The Changing Global Balance

There's much discussion in Japan of its increasing involvement in things like multilateral peacekeeping missions and so on. Do you think we will see more Japanese involvement in these efforts?

I think it's going to come, but it is a very touchy subject because for a long time the Japanese public has decided that Japan's contribution to world peace will not be through sending military personnel, even the military of the UN, which is not of a fighting or combat nature. It is very hard for them to perceive that the military can also have a peacemaking role, and this is taking a little time.

And this is also true of Germany, of course.

Yes, very much so. I think it has to be dealt with very carefully.

What is your estimate of the U.S. role?

The United States will continue to play a very major role, but I think the United States will find it increasingly difficult to mobilize support because the opponent is no longer there. The United States, as the leader of the free world, mobilized security and financial support on account of a very formidable opponent, the Soviet Union. Now that that is gone, there has to be a much different way of building cooperation, building support, and I don't know whether the United States is ready to deal with other countries on the basis of consensus and support rather than assuming that everybody follows them.

pull-quote from interview What would enable the United States to move toward more consensus in the way you are describing?

There are several ways. First the United States should not assume that everybody will automatically follow, which I'm afraid is a tendency that Americans have had. Also I think the United States will have to show its economic and social strength. By far, the greatest strength of the United States is in the military field, and I think it will be important for the United States to have overall strength.

Let's talk about the universities, because I know that area the best. I was here. The American academic community was very, very outstanding. I think it still produces the best research and can bring together the best minds, but the really wonderful thing about the American academic community is the openness, the capacity to bring in people from other countries, the best brains. It is a very fair and open system. This is the most important part about American leadership in the intellectual world and the academic community. My country, Japan, although it has very outstanding research and intellectual capacity, does not have that openness to draw people from other parts of the world, and in this sense, I think, intrinsic excellence is going to count.

I don't know whether you can say that you have the same kind of leadership role in the business world or in the manufacturing world. I think there's some imbalance in your social policies. America is a land of opportunities, but the fact is that you do have serious social problems. And I think it would be in these areas that the United States' leadership is going to be tested.

One other American impulse has been the humanitarian one, especially important in refugee work.

The United States has shown a very clear humanitarian commitment, not only in their contributions, but in the concern of the humanitarian sector. This concern is very global, and the kind of information that Americans have is very global. Also, the American-based NGO community, the nongovernmental organizations, are extremely powerful and large in their operations, so the private sector matches the government's commitment. I'd like to see more countries matching the humanitarian capacity of the United States.

Will the United States continue to be able to demonstrate our cultural strengths if our economic base is eroded?

I think the economic base causes a great deal of problems to the United States.

What will be the role of the national state in the world order that is emerging with the end of the Cold War?

Take the example of state and people. The number of states that exist in the world today is somewhere around hundred and eighty, but if you look at the ethnic groups and if you define people in terms of language base, there are many more, three thousand or something like that. What is the integrating force that will bring different peoples together to form a state? This is the basic question that many states are facing. The splitting of states is going to make a much more unstable world, because unity of people is based on tradition, culture, sentiment, which in themselves are very important components of forming a state. But there is the other problem: economic viability. Western European states are moving into a single market to make their economic base stronger. So on one side is the need for a viable economy to sustain the state, and on the other side are states splitting on an emotional basis. Again, during the Cold War, people didn't have the liberty to split into small units because the danger of being forced into one zone or the other was very serious, so the liberalizing effect of the post-Cold War period has a very dangerous undertone. The free market system has a possibility of greater viability, but at the same time, the disintegration of state is a very strong destabilizing factor.

The Cold War was a critique of liberalism, whether in terms of a liberal economy, the movement of people, ideology, and so on, and the post-Cold War world order will have to regain liberal principles. And this is why I think consensus building among people and among states is going to be crucial, and there will have to be much more conscious efforts at negotiations and discussions, trying to agree on minimal principles, because survival is an issue.

Do you have any suggestions about how students should prepare for this multipolar world?

What I would like to underline is the fact that the changes in the world political system affect the movement of people a lot. Whether it is refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants, or people on the move, how you get order out of that is a very very serious problem. If I were to teach a course in international relations, ethnic and societal issues would have to be a bit more emphasized, because we are very limited with regard to these subjects in the whole international relations area. I think most international analysis is based on states rather than society, but what composes a state will have to be examined much more today, bringing more sociology into political science.

What strengths will students need in the world that is emerging?

Independent thinking is very important. Berkeley is a place that can produce these independent-thinking people for the future.