It’s all about building bridges that, when finished, look the same from both sides of the river.

That’s how U.S. Army Col. Tom Wilhelm sees the future of foreign relations.

“Think about it,” Wilhelm said, addressing a standing-room-only crowd of admirers Wednesday in the Pine Room at Kansas University’s Kansas Union. “It doesn’t make much sense to build a bridge if you don’t know where it’s going to end up, what it’ll look like or what purpose it’s going to serve.”

The best bridges, he said, are built with lots of understanding. And for Americans that means realizing that many of the values they take for granted — such as the notion that everybody wants to distinguish themselves — are not shared in other countries.

“In Eurasia today, the tendency is to avoid sticking out,” he said.

Though many Americans choose not to vote, most embrace the notion of voters having a hand in choosing their leaders. But in Eurasia, Wilhelm said, “voting is still problematic. People vote because they have to; they don’t see what’s in it for them.”

Wilhelm, a West Point graduate who spent a one-year residency at Kansas University’s Center for Russian and East European Studies in 1988-1989, is now associate dean for Eurasian studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.

He’s also the subject of a feature story, “The Man Who Would be Khan,” a reference to his tour of duty in Mongolia, in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. In the article, author Robert Kaplan puts Wilhelm in the forefront of “A new breed of American soldier — call him the soldier-diplomat — (that) has come into being since the end of the Cold War.”

Wilhelm bristled at the accolade. “I’m a soldier,” he said.

Wilhelm praised KU’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, calling it one of the best in the nation.

“I refer a lot of my students here,” he said. “I tell them the faculty will help them learn what they want to learn rather than expecting them to sit at the feet of the masters … I loved it here.”