Soft Power and Strategy: Developing a ‘Strategic’ Concept of Power

Abstract

In coining the term ‘soft power’, Joseph Nye has contributed one of the best known and most widely referred to concepts within the discourse of US grand strategy. Nye introduced this term in 1990 in his book Bound to Lead, and has since developed the concept within a series of publications (Nye 1990: 32, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008). Nye’s (1990: 8) earliest work on the subject challenged those who presumed that US power was in decline and argued instead that America’s power was far more comprehensive than was evident if one merely examined traditional power resources such as military capability, economic wealth and geographic and population size. Nye’s key point here was that, in an increasingly interdependent world, ‘hard power’ resources, including military and economic assets, were of less utility than they had been in earlier eras of international politics. Of growing importance in the modern era was, according to Nye (1990: 32), ‘soft power’, the power associated with attracting others and getting them ‘to want what you want’.