As the only state that can "depose governments 8,000 miles away without batting an eye," the United States "has no military rivals whatsoever." Yet for more than five years, it has chronically failed to pacify Iraq, according to international political economist Francis Fukuyama '74.

The reason, he told a full house in the Biotechnology Building April 23, is that Washington has failed to realize that "we are living in a weak-state world that is very different from the strong-state world that we are used to thinking about in the context of 20th-century politics."

Fukuyama, the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and director of its International Development Program, discussed foreign-policy challenges facing the next U.S. administration. Developing strategies to deal with weak states throughout much of the Middle East, for example, will be critical, he said.

A former specialist on the Middle East and Europe for the U.S. Department of State who has written numerous books on government policy, Fukuyrama called "hard power" -- using traditional military might against other states -- impossible in the Middle East, where few governments are strong enough to control nonstate groups within their own borders. He cited the example of Lebanon, where the militant organization Hezbollah has wide popular support from Shi'a Lebanese society.

Facing this new reality in many regions of the world, American leaders must focus not only on winning military confrontations, but also on developing the support of populations abroad, Fukuyama said. "The overuse of hard power is almost always counterproductive. If you do not wage a political struggle for the hearts and minds of the population, you are not going to win that struggle."

The Bush administration's policies during the last seven years have made it clear, he added, that unilateralism leads to failure. "We have not solved the problem of collective action in dealing with important security challenges or even humanitarian problems," he said. The next administration's leaders must be prepared to engage other states as they seek to overcome foreign-policy obstacles, from improving the image of the United States abroad to dealing with nuclear proliferation by rogue governments, he said.

In addition, Fukuyama stressed the importance of effectively implementing policy. Citing the lack of preparation by American leaders for the post-invasion period in Iraq, he said, "One of the really distressing things about the way that the American government has worked over the last seven years is its sheer level of incompetence at actually administering policies."

And although the current administration has neglected Asia, Fukuyama predicted that Asia, not the Middle East, will likely prove central to international politics in the coming years.

"I'm not convinced that Osama bin Laden and his friends are going to be around in 25 years, but believe me, China is going to be there," he said. Instead of relying on the hope that China will democratize and warm to the United States in the near future, which Fukuyama believes is unlikely, American leaders must prepare for the possibility of an increasingly powerful and threatening Chinese government.

His visit, part of the Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series, was sponsored by Cornell's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Chris Tozzi '08 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.