Every year for over a decade, I have ventured to Innsbruck, nestled in Austria’s Tyrol region, to enlighten students at the Management Center of Innsbruck about the need to better understand goings on in Asia. It isn’t a tough sell: They are mostly business students and sense the importance of developments half a world away.
Each year begins by arguing that the world is being transformed from a bipolar transatlantic system to one that accommodates the (re)rise of Asia. Central to the course is a grasp of how this evolution will affect the way the world works, and the accompanying changes in the instruments, rules and institutions of power, and even the nature of power itself.
Obviously, that demands an understanding of what power is. Recent developments may force me to rewrite those introductory classes.