Joseph Nye, prominent Havard int'l relations scholar, dies at 88
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) -- Joseph Nye, a prominent scholar of international relations who had a significant influence on the U.S.-Japan alliance, has died, Harvard University said Wednesday. He was 88.
Nye, who was dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1995 to 2004, after serving as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under U.S. President Bill Clinton, died on Tuesday, according to the university, which did not disclose the cause of his death.
Known for pioneering the theory of "soft power" to shed light on how nonmilitary strengths, such as cultural curiosity, can influence the behavior of other countries, Nye was a leading voice on U.S.-Japan relations.
With Richard Armitage, a fellow senior U.S. official who served as deputy secretary of state, Nye brought together a bipartisan group ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2000 to shape a vision to improve the alliance between Washington and Tokyo.
Nye and Armitage, who died in mid-April at the age of 79, were in charge of regularly releasing reports containing a set of proposals to bolster the bilateral relationship.
The latest report, the sixth of its kind, was issued in April last year. In it, the group called on the two countries to build a "more integrated" partnership amid a challenging security environment, with one key pillar being the transformation of the decades-old alliance's command-and-control architecture.
In addition to holding the high-ranking assistant defense secretary post between 1994 and 1995, he served as chair of the National Intelligence Council and deputy undersecretary of state for security assistance, science and technology.
Nye, born in South Orange, New Jersey, first joined Harvard's faculty in 1964 upon earning a doctorate in political science. Prior to that, he studied at Princeton and Oxford universities.
He was a prolific writer, publishing more than 10 books including "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics," "The Future of Power" and "Is the American Century Over?"
"It is impossible to capture Joe's intellectual contributions in a paragraph or a page," the Harvard school's current dean, Jeremy Weinstein, said in a statement on his death.
"In a century of unprecedented change in global politics, he was among the foremost thinkers to shape our understanding of contemporary international relations."
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