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:
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—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“... the most important effect of the suffrage is psychological. The permanent consciousness of power for effective action, the knowledge that their own thoughts have an equal chance with those of any other person ... this is what has always rendered the men of a free state so energetic, so acutely intelligent, so powerful.”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)