Is this good or bad for the world? In the NIC's view, "a collapse or sudden retreat of US power would most likely result in an extended period of global anarchy", with "no stable international system and no leading power to replace the US".

The NIC discussed earlier drafts of its report with intellectuals and officials in 20 countries, and reports that none of the world's emerging powers has a revisionist view of international order along the lines of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union. But these countries' relations with the US are ambiguous. They benefit from the US-led world order, but are often irritated by American slights and unilateralism. One attraction of a multipolar world is less US dominance; but the only thing worse than a US-supported international order would be no order at all.

The question of America's role in helping to produce a more benign world in 2030 has important implications for US President Barack Obama as he approaches his second term. The world faces a new set of transnational challenges, including climate change, transnational terrorism, cyber insecurity and pandemics. All of these issues require cooperation to resolve.

Obama's 2010 National Security Strategy argues that the US must think of power as positive-sum, not just zero-sum. In other words, there may be times when a more powerful China is good for the US (and for the world). For example, the US should be eager to see China increase its ability to control its world-leading greenhouse gas emissions.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has referred to the Obama administration's foreign policy as being based on "smart power", which combines hard and soft power resources, and argued that we should not talk about "multipolarity", but about "multi-partnerships". Likewise, the NIC report suggests that Americans must learn better how to exercise power with as well as over other states.

To be sure, on issues arising from interstate military relations, understanding how to form alliances and balance power will remain crucial. But the best military arrangements will do little to solve many of the world's new transnational problems, which jeopardize the security of millions of people at least as much as traditional military threats do. Leadership on such issues will require cooperation, institutions and the creation of public goods from which all can benefit and none can be excluded.

The NIC report rightly concludes that there is no predetermined answer to what the world will look like in 2030. Whether the future holds benign or malign scenarios depends in part on the policies that we adopt today.

Project Syndicate

Joseph Nye is a professor at Harvard and author of The Future of Power.

(China Daily 01/12/2013 page5)