Joseph S. Nye

AP Photo

October 2010

"American and Chinese Power after the Financial Crisis"

Journal Article, Washington Quarterly, issue 4, volume 33

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"...Asia has its own internal balance of powers, and in that context, many states continue to welcome an American presence in the region. Chinese leaders have to contend with the reactions of other countries, as well as the constraints created by their own objectives of economic growth and the need for external markets and resources. Too aggressive a Chinese military posture could produce a countervailing coalition among its neighbors that would weaken both its hard and soft power. A poll of 16 countries around the world found a positive attitude toward China’s economic rise, but not its military rise."

February-March 2008

"Recovering American Leadership"

Journal Article, Survival, issue 1, volume 50

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"Leaders are those who help groups create and achieve shared goals. Traditionally, the leaders in international politics have been the most powerful states. However, while hard military power counts for more in the context of international politics than it does in democratic domestic politics, even in international relations conquest, or pure coercion, is not leadership, but mere dictation. Disproportionate power, sometimes called 'hegemony', has been associated with leadership, but appeals to values and ideology also matter, even for a hegemon...."

Fall 2006

"Smart Power: In Search of the Balance between Hard and Soft Power (Book Review of Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security By Kurt M. Campbell and Michael E. O'Hanlon)"

Journal Article, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, issue 2

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"When I developed the concept of soft power a decade and a half ago, the conventional wisdom was that the United States was in decline. As the late Senator Paul Tsongas put it in 1992, "the Cold War is over, and Japan and Germany won." As I was trying to understand why the declinists were wrong and why I thought the United States would be the leading country of the twenty-first century, I totaled up American military and economic power and realized that something was still missing: the enormous capacity of this country to get what it wants by attraction rather than through coercion. This attractive, or "soft," power stemmed from American culture, values, and policies that were broadly inclusive and seen as legitimate in the eyes of others."

July / August 2006

Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy

Journal Article, Foreign Affairs, issue 4, volume 85

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Summer/Fall 2005

IR through a Novel Lens: Fiction and the Washington Power Game

Journal Article, Brown Journal of World Affairs, issue I, volume XII

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Summer 1986

The Owls' Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War

Journal Article, Washington Quarterly

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Albert Carnesale, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

The debate over national security and arms control has focused primarily on weapons: more or fewer weapons, different kinds of weapons. During the 1984 presidential campaign, for example, President Ronald Reagan defended his administration's military buildup, the biggest in peacetime. Former Vice President Walter Mondale advocated a freeze on deploying new weapons. Numbers and types of arms have preoccupied governments and specialists on both the right and the left.

March/April 2013

"Our Pacific Predicament"

Magazine or Newspaper Article, American Interest, issue 4, volume 8

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"American interests rest on stability in the region to allow the continuing growth of trade and investment that benefits all countries. The U.S.-Japan alliance remains crucial to stability in East Asia, but so too are good relations in all three sides of the strategic triangle. One thing is clear: If, despite all we do, Sino-Japanese relations deteriorate toward literal conflict, the United States will be faced with some very tough choices."

AP Photo

Spring 2011

"The Future of Power"

Magazine or Newspaper Article, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, issue 3, volume LXIV

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Jack L. Goldsmith

"The conventional wisdom among those who looked at the Middle East used to be that you had a choice either of supporting the autocrat or being stuck with the religious extremists. The extraordinary diffusion of information created in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries reveals a strong middle that we weren't fully aware of. What is more, new technologies allow this new middle to coordinate in ways unseen before Twitter, Facebook, and so forth, and this could lead to a very different politics of the Middle East. This introduces a new complexity to our government's dealings with the region."

AP Photo

March 8, 2011

"Zakaria's World"

Magazine or Newspaper Article, Foreign Policy

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

"...China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the United States not only draws on a talent pool of 7 billion, but can recombine them in a diverse culture that enhances creativity in a way that ethnic Han nationalism cannot."

AP Photo

Summer 2009

"Hard Decisions on Soft Power: Opportunities and Difficulties for Chinese Soft Power"

Magazine or Newspaper Article, Harvard International Review, issue 2, volume 31

By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Wang Jisi

"But just as China's economic and military power does not yet match that of the United States, China's soft power still has a long way to go as demonstrated by a Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll. China does not have cultural industries like Hollywood, and its universities are not yet the equal of the United States. It lacks the many non-governmental organizations that generate much of US soft power. Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. While that may make the "Beijing consensus" attractive in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing countries, it undercuts China's soft power in the West. Although China's new diplomacy has enhanced its attractiveness to its neighbors in Southeast Asia, the belligerence of its hard power stance toward Taiwan hurt it in Europe when China sought to persuade Europeans to relax their embargo on the sale of arms. Given the domestic problems that China must still overcome, there are limits to China's ability to attract others, but one would be foolish to ignore the gains the country is making."