Soft power is a concept developed by Joseph Nye to describe the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or give money as a means of persuasion. The phrase was coined by Joseph Nye of Harvard University in a 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. He further developed the concept in his 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. The term is now widely used in international affairs by analysts and statesmen. For example, in 2007, CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China needed to increase its soft power, and the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke of the need to enhance American soft power by "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security--diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development."
In 2010 Annette Lu, former vice-president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, visited South Korea and advocated the ROC's use of soft power as a model for the resolution of international conflicts.
General Wesley Clark when discussing soft power commented that, “it gave us an influence far beyond the hard edge of traditional balance-of-power politics.”
Read more about Soft Power: Description, Making Power Soft, Limitation, Measuring Soft Power, Just Power, Academic Debates Around Soft Power, Relevancy
Famous quotes containing the words soft and/or power:
“Though now in her old age, in her young age
She had been beautiful in that old way
That’s all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,
And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all
But soft beauty and indolent desire.”
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“Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major—perhaps the major—stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.”
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