{"id":26452,"date":"2025-05-07T23:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T23:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=26452"},"modified":"2025-05-07T23:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T23:57:11","slug":"joseph-nye-who-coined-the-term-soft-power-dies-aged-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=26452","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Nye, who coined the term \u2018soft power\u2019, dies aged 88"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\">Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=f78aab9d-9cb0-4194-a9a3-b6d545dfc725&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Joseph Nye, one of the world\u2019s foremost thinkers and practitioners in the field of international relations, who coined the term \u201csoft power\u201d, has died aged 88.<\/p>\n<p>In a career spanning six decades, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/b666667f-23da-4caa-8aee-ede944d6c99a\" data-trackable=\"link\">Nye<\/a> made extensive contributions to political scholarship and served in two US presidential administrations, leading nuclear non-proliferation efforts and pushing for closer ties with Japan.<\/p>\n<p>Most notably, he came up with the concept of \u201csoft power\u201d to describe a nation\u2019s ability to get what it wanted \u201cthrough attraction, rather than coercion or payment\u201d \u2014 an idea he said US President Donald Trump had failed to grasp.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFew contributed as much to our intellectual capital, our understanding of the world and America\u2019s place in it,\u201d said Antony Blinken, secretary of state under Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p>Nye\u2019s career oscillated between theoretical and policymaking roles, which colleagues said gave him a unique insight into the mechanics of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/us-foreign-policy\" data-trackable=\"link\">US foreign policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess the big thing about Joe was, to me, he is the perfect academic who is able to do the highly theoretical international relations thinking and then turn it into policy,\u201d said Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China expert and top White House Asia adviser to George W Bush.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Nye graduated with a PhD from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/38bf05bb-2482-4c84-812c-8f909d7a2e62\" data-trackable=\"link\">Harvard<\/a> in 1964 and joined the faculty of the university, where he was one of the founding faculty members of the modern iteration of the university\u2019s Kennedy School of Government, a conveyor belt of leaders and policymakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Alongside fellow academic Robert Keohane, Nye put forward the theory of \u201ccomplex interdependence\u201d, arguing countries can become so economically entwined that military force ceases to be the most important factor between them.<\/p>\n<p>President Jimmy Carter put him in charge of his administration\u2019s efforts on nuclear non-proliferation, a subject he continued to work on as head of Harvard\u2019s Belfer Center, a research hub, from 1989 to 1993.<\/p>\n<p>Nye returned to government under President Bill Clinton, who appointed him chair of the National Intelligence Council and an assistant secretary of defence, tasked with developing strategy on US security relations with the world at large \u2014 and in particular Asia. He was a leading advocate of the US-Japanese alliance as Chinese power in the region grew. <\/p>\n<p>Randall Schriver, chair of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, praised Nye\u2019s \u201cinnumerable contributions to the national security of the United States\u201d. He said Washington\u2019s alliance with Tokyo \u201chas continued to flourish in no small part due to [Nye\u2019s] efforts\u201d and those of Richard Armitage, another prominent US diplomat, who died last month. <\/p>\n<p>Nye went on to serve for almost a decade as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. Jeremy Weinstein, the school\u2019s current dean, described him as \u201ca singular scholar, a visionary dean, and a committed mentor\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven in a place as steeped in history as HKS, Joe stands out as a transformational figure,\u201d Weinstein said.\u00a0\u201cHe helped build this institution into what it is today, while transforming the field of international relations.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"eab666aa-2a85-493e-bf3c-ada56583d73e\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/eab666aa-2a85-493e-bf3c-ada56583d73e\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" data-trackable-context-story-link=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2644\/1487\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p> In recent years, Nye was a staunch critic of Trump, who he argued did not understand the value of soft power. \u201cHis background in New York real estate gave him a truncated view of power limited to coercion and transactions\u201d, he wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/63df699a-efdb-4613-b070-80a763ec024e\" data-trackable=\"link\">recent Financial Times essay<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTrue realism does not neglect liberal values or soft power. But extreme narcissists such as Trump are not true realists, and American soft power will have a hard time during the next four years,\u201d Nye wrote.<\/p>\n<p>His death \u2014 and that of Armitage \u2014 comes as the US struggles with a dwindling pool of Asia experts against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are definitely experiencing a shortage of people steeped in Asian culture,\u201d Wilder said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s going to have a long-term negative effect.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/f78aab9d-9cb0-4194-a9a3-b6d545dfc725\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}