The Need to Get Smart

He now elaborates on the concept of “smart power”. In The Future of Power,he argues that in the age of information and amid the rise of once marginal states and non-state actors,great powers will succeed only if they can combine hard power (the capacity for military coercion and economic inducement) with soft power (the ability to attract and persuade) into a strategy of “smart power”.

The phrase “smart power” is already part of the foreign policy vocabulary of the Obama Administration. For Nye,however,the term “smart power” is not just another trendy soundbite. It flows from a long and distinguished academic career studying the nature of power,its redistribution in the world system,and the efficacy and limits of its application.

In the late 1970s,Nye co-authored,with Robert Keohane,the classic work Power and Interdependence. He then explored the impact of the emerging,complex economic interdependence among nation-states on international power politics. He suggested that new norms,institutions and mutuality of economic interests tended to curb the inherent tendencies for competition and rivalry among major powers. In the late 1980s,Nye contested the thesis on American decline popularised by Paul Kennedy in his work,The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In his Bound to Lead: The Future of American Power,Nye insisted that the huge gap in power capabilities between the United States and its potential peer competitors would ensure that Washington would be the pre-eminent power in the post-Cold War period. He turned out to be right.

As American anxieties about its decline resurfaced during the years of George W. Bush,Nye’s volume on soft power underlined the importance of looking beyond the traditional military and economic instruments of power. He urged the United States to move away from the focus on unilateral exercise of hard power and refurbish its earlier capacity to co-opt other nations through soft power.

The Future of Power is in many ways the summation of Nye’s work during the last few decades. It is of great relevance to the contemporary debates on the future of the international order after the global economic crisis and the rise of China,India and other non-Western powers.

Nye’s new book should be required reading for any one who wishes to make sense of contemporary world politics. Utter clarity about basic concepts and a rare felicity to make them accessible make it a joy to read.

The book is divided into three sections. The first elaborates on the concepts of military,economic and soft power. The second assesses the implications of the diffusion of power in the world today. It has an excellent chapter on cyberpower,one of the most consequential but complex subjects of our time. The final section analyses the concept of smart power and prescribes a framework for building it.

At one level,Nye’s new volume is a decisive intervention in the current American foreign policy debate. At a broader level it addresses all relevant actors — old and new — in the international system.

Nye’s work will help India’s decision-makers and chattering classes to think through implications of the nation’s rapidly improving power position in the world.

If Delhi wants to convert its increasing material power into desired political outcomes,its elite needs to begin a rigorous debate on the nature of power and India’s purpose in the international system. Any such exercise must necessarily begin with a reading of Nye’s latest book.