Joseph S. Nye

AP Photo

October 13, 2009

"U.S., Russia Must Lead on Arms Control"

Op-Ed, Politico

By General Brent Scowcroft, Editorial Board Member, Quarterly Journal: International Security, Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School and Strobe Talbott

"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee cited Obama's dedication to arms control and nonproliferation when announcing last Friday his selection as this year's laureate. If he creates a positive, mutually reinforcing dynamic in the way he presents and sequences the two treaties [NPT and CTBT], it will give momentum and coherence to follow-on negotiations and the agreements that they produce."

December 5, 2005

Soft Power Matters in Asia

Op-Ed, The Japan Times

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

November 18, 2005

Of Might and Right: The Allure of Asia

Op-Ed, The Manila Times

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Summer 2011

"What Role Should the U.S. Play in Middle East?"

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, Ashraf Hegazy, Former Executive Director, The Dubai Initiative, Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs; Faculty Chair, International Security Program

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.

AP Photo

March 4, 2010

"Restoring America's Reputation in the World and Why It Matters"

Testimony

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"...[M]ilitary analysts trying to understand counter-insurgency have rediscovered the importance of struggles over soft power. In the words of General David Patreus, "we did reaffirm in Iraq the recognition that you don't kill or capture your way out of an industrial-strength insurgency." More recently he warned against expedient measures that damage our reputation. "We end us paying a price for it ultimately. Abu Ghraib and other situations like that are non-biodegradable. They don't go away. The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick."  In Afghanistan, the Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned one, to soften their image and win favor with local Afghans as they try to counter the Americans' new campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds.

AP Photo

December 15, 2009

"Testing Obama's Foreign Policy"

Op-Ed, Business Daily, (Africa)

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"...critics on the left have complained that he has not been able to get Congress to pass a tough energy bill before the Copenhagen conference on climate change. But Obama has helped to persuade China and India to announce useful efforts, and he will set an American target of reducing greenhouse emissions that should prevent the conference from being a failure."

AP Photo

December 23, 2008

"Obama Meets the World"

Op-Ed, Daily News Egypt

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"Many people will try to set President Barack Obama's priorities, but one person is sure to have a major effect. George W. Bush has bequeathed an unenviable legacy: an economic crisis, two wars, a struggle against terrorism, and problems across the Middle East and elsewhere. If Obama fails to fight these fires successfully, they will consume his political capital, but if all he does is fight them, he will inherit Bush's priorities. The new president must deal with the past and chart a new future at the same time."

December 11, 2006

"NATO May Soon Fail amid the Afghan Opium Fields"

Op-Ed, Daily Star

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"One of the great costs of the Bush administration's mistaken Iraq policy has been to divert attention and resources away from the just war in Afghanistan. If only a small portion of the money and forces invested in Iraq had been devoted to Afghanistan, the current threat of a resurgent Taliban and Al-Qaeda might not be so great."

April 8, 2013

"Incompatibility Hinders BRICS Bloc"

Op-Ed, Taipei Times

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"...[W]hile the BRICS may be helpful in coordinating certain diplomatic tactics, the term lumps together highly disparate countries. Not only is South Africa miniscule compared with the others, but China's economy is larger than those of all of the other members combined. Likewise, India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies, and occasionally meet in an alternative forum that they call IBSA (the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum)."

November 2012

"Declinist Pundits"

Op-Ed, Foreign Policy

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"Decline is a misleading metaphor that assumes there is an organic life cycle for countries as there is for individuals. We know little about the life cycle of states. It took three centuries for the Western Roman Empire to decline from its apogee to collapse. After Britain lost its American colonies in the 18th century, writer Horace Walpole lamented that Britain was reduced to the insignificance of Sardinia. He missed the fact that the Industrial Revolution was about to produce Britain's greatest century. Put simply, we do not know where the United States is in its supposed life cycle."