Joseph Nye embodied ‘soft power’ with his charm and personality

Joseph Nye. (Source: By Chatham House, Wikimedia/Commons)

Joseph Nye, the towering international relations (IR) scholar and a former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1995 to 2004), who died on May 6 will be long remembered for introducing the innovative concept of ‘soft power’ as an important adjunct to the tangible hard power that the US brought to the global stage. His distinctive formulation influenced American foreign and security policy in different ways from the era of Presidents Jimmy Carter during the Cold War to that of Joe Biden more recently.

Born in 1937, the young Nye’s formative years were the phase after America emerged victorious in World War II and embraced the containment of communism (and the former USSR) as the grand national strategy, followed by the US soon lurching into the tragic Vietnam War.

After graduating from Oxford, Nye did his Ph.D at Harvard and joined the faculty in 1964 where he co-founded the theory of neoliberalism in international relations with Robert Keohane (1977).

In that period, Nye turned policy maker and served in the administrations of Jimmy Carter (1976) and later Bill Clinton (1993) where he became more deeply aware of the limits of military and economic power in the US tool-box.

Ingredients of soft power

He advanced the thesis that certain intangible, normative principles - such as a commitment to democracy, human rights and liberalism, free speech, gender equity, empathetic societal practices, education-cum-development aid and cultural values among other attributes comprised the soft power of a nation. This collective power enabled seductive persuasion, he opined – as opposed to intimidation and brazen arm-twisting to advance US global objectives.

Nye’s 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics” became a standard reference volume for diplomats, public policy professionals and political leaders in the US and world over, including China. Over the years, more nuanced interpretations such as smart power and sharp power followed.

In a tribute to Nye, Jake Sullivan, the former US national security adviser to President Joe Biden, noted: “Joe Nye was a giant: a giant because his ideas shaped the worldviews of multiple generations of policymakers — but even more so a giant because his personal touch shaped our life choices.”

Disappointed at the turn in American politics

Ironically, Nye who was an ardent advocate of the US as a force for global good – one that could persuade the world to accept its leadership in a Gramscian manner (the consensual hegemony concept), due to its constitutional commitment to normative principles and its ingrained fidelity to institutional rectitude – was deeply disappointed by the emergence of the Trump phenomenon in American politics and society.

A few days before his demise, Nye spoke to CNN and shared his anguish, where he observed – sadly, one presumes:
“I’m afraid President Trump doesn’t understand soft power. Think back on the Cold War — American nuclear deterrence and American troops in Europe were crucial. But when the Berlin Wall went down, it didn’t go down under a barrage of artillery. It went down under hammers and bulldozers wielded by people whose minds had been changed by the Voice of America and the BBC.”

Alas, the US whose soft power was extolled by Nye and those of his persuasion has now transmuted into what its allies and partners refer to as an extortionist, transactional power – often clumsy and gauche on the international stage, thanks to a mercurial President at the helm wherein rectitude, regrettably has been replaced by Trumpian turpitude.

Nye and India

Nye had an important role to play as regards the rapprochement in the troubled US-India relationship and this was during the Bush 43 period, (2001 – 09) when Condoleezza Rice who served first as NSA (national security adviser) and later Secretary of State supported high-level American participation in the Track 1.5 dialogues at the time.

Convened under the aegis of the Aspen Strategy Group, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Joseph Nye were among the American heavyweights, while the Indian side included K Subrahmanyam, Naresh Chandra, Ratan Tata and Tarun Das among others. The deliberations of this group played a significant role in irrigating the otherwise arid and prickly bilateral eco-system that finally culminated in the Bush-Manmohan Singh breakthrough of 2005.

Reviewing the current turbulence in the India-US relationship, it appears that Nye was prescient. Commenting on India and the global balance of power in June 2023, he observed that although Delhi “no longer speaks of non-alignment, nor is it interested in restrictive alliances, following the basic logic of balance-of-power politics, India and the US seem fated not for marriage but for a long-term partnership: one that might last only as long as both countries remain concerned about China.”

A caution that should be heeded

Author of 14 books and over 200 journal articles, Nye was a much-loved teacher and numerous students have testified to his humane and generous nature. Personally, one can vouch for the deep impact his writings had on me as a student of IR and one of his reflections on China and sharp power in 2018 merits recall:

“As democracies respond to China’s sharp power and information warfare, they have to be careful not to overreact. Much of the soft power democracies wield comes from civil society, which means that openness is a crucial asset. China could generate more soft power if it would relax some of its tight party control over civil society. Similarly, manipulation of media and reliance on covert channels of communication often reduces soft power. Democracies should avoid the temptation to imitate these authoritarian sharp-power tools.”

There is an embedded message here for major democracies such as the US and India about how soft power can become brittle and the centrality of civil society.

Joseph Nye’s illustrious life and seminal contribution to the theory and practice of IR should serve as a beacon of hope in the bleakness that is engulfing global democratic governance.