Just Power
To overcome the conventional discussions on soft and hard power, Nayef Al-Rodhan highlights the importance of justice in the debate and proposes the concept of "just power". He argues that both, a state’s soft and hard power tools, have to be employed in the service of justice, if this power has to be sustainable. Justice is to be understood here in a minimalist sense, namely the respect of universal human rights. Al-Rodhan argues that justice in international affairs and as part of states’ foreign policies should not be pursued for altruistic reasons or out of a desire to do what is right, but rather, it should be pursued because it is the only sustainable way for states to promote progress and stability in a globalized world. By promoting justice, states will be able to make its influence over others sustainable and therefore to achieve their own national goals.
Read more about this topic: Soft Power
Famous quotes containing the word power:
“The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)