Joseph Nye, pioneer of ‘soft power' and adviser to US presidents, dies as Trump era challenges legacy

Malay Mail

09-05-2025

WASHINGTON, May 8 — Joseph Nye, a versatile and influential political scientist and US policymaker who coined the term 'soft power,' a concept of nations gaining dominance through attractiveness now scoffed at by President Donald Trump, has died, Harvard University announced yesterday. He was 88.
Nye, who died Tuesday, first joined Harvard's faculty in 1964 and served as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School as well as in positions under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
The author of 14 books and more than 200 journal articles, the neo-liberal thinker studied topics as varied as arms control and pan-Africanism but became best known for developing the term 'soft power' in the late 1980s.
As opposed to hard power, such as weapons and economic sanctions, soft power includes values and culture that can win over others.
'Soft power — getting others to want the outcomes that you want — co-opts people rather than coerces them,' Nye wrote in a 2004 book on the topic.
Among other examples, he pointed to growing US influence in Latin America when Franklin Roosevelt instituted a 'good neighbor policy' and, conversely, how the Soviet Union lost Eastern Europe through brutality even as Moscow's hard power grew.
Trump, since returning to office in January, has sharply reduced US soft power, including through dismantling foreign assistance and cracking down on international students, and has sought to ramp up military spending.
In responses to AFP in February about how he saw Trump's second term, Nye wrote: 'Trump does not really understand power. He only thinks in terms of coercion and payment.'
'He mistakes short-term results for long-term effects. Hard coercive power (such as a threat of tariffs) may work in the short term while creating incentives for others to reduce their reliance on the US in the longer term,' he wrote to AFP by email.
'Our success over the past eight decades has also been based on attractiveness.'
But he said that US soft power had seen cycles in the past, pointing to the unpopularity of the United States during the Vietnam War.
'We will probably recover somewhat after Trump, but he has damaged trust in the US,' he wrote.
Nuclear thinker
Nye acknowledged the limitations of soft power alone. In his book, he wrote: 'Excellent wines and cheese do not guarantee attraction to France, nor does the popularity of Pokemon games assure that Japan will get the policy outcomes it wishes.'
Nye was considered a possible national security adviser if John Kerry won the White House in 2004. He was also particularly active on Japan, where former president Barack Obama considered appointing him ambassador.
Always attentive to soft power, Nye took to the opinion pages of The New York Times in 2010 to criticise some in the Obama administration for seeking to play 'hardball' with a new, inexperienced Japanese government over base relocation, calling for a 'more patient and strategic approach' to the longtime US ally.
Much of Nye's time in government was focused on nuclear policy. He argued that the risk of nuclear weapons could have deterred major powers from entering World War I — but that the spread of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War posed new dangers.
'He was proudest of having contributed both intellectually... and practically (in the Carter and Clinton administrations) to preventing nuclear war,' fellow Harvard scholar Graham Allison said in a statement. — AFP