The Future of Power: And Use in the Twenty-first Century - Hardcover

Finacial Times, March 6, 2011 "An illuminating distillation of the power relationships shaping a world in which the state with the best military can lose to the adversary with the better story...Nye makes sense of these new complexities." Washington Times, April 5, 2011 "Nye's writing style is accessible even when his subject grows more complex.... A helpful primer to better understand the tools available to those formulating America's foreign policy." Foreign Affairs, March/April 2011 "Nye is the preeminent theorist of power in world affairs today, and this book is a grand synthesis of his ideas and an essential guide to the debate over the decline of the United States and the rise of China." LA Times, March 25, 2011"Whether it's navigating the political waves of the Middle East or the diplomatic dance with China, the book offers a generous batch of insights.... Nye is a savvy and respected analyst, and he doesn't disappoint here. He's grappling with the hardest of questions, and though The Future of Power can at times read somewhat meanderingly, it's the best kind of meandering: a learned journey through big ideas of what power means and how it is ever-evolving." Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State "Joseph Nye is America's foremost expert on the substance, diversity, uses, and abuses of power. He writes with insights that a president or secretary of state would find valuable, and makes foreign policy less foreign for every reader. If your goal is to understand world affairs in the twenty-first century, there could be no better guide than "The Future of Power.""Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of The Aspen Institute "Power once came from controlling the sea lanes. In the future, Joe Nye explains, it will come from the ability to navigate the information lanes of cyberspace and control the narrative that influences people. Sweeping in its themes but specific in its examples, this book is exciting to read and fascinating to contemplate.""Economist," February 4, 2011 "If...you find yourself hankering after sturdier fare, then salvation is at hand in the form of Joseph Nye's painstaking new work, "The Future of Power."...The book comes alive when Mr. Nye...cast[s] doubt on the idea that America is in precipitate decline.""Kirkus," January 15, 2011 "Illuminating analysis of the mechanisms of power shaping global politics.... Nye Jr.'s latest book steers the traditional debate over power politics into a new direction....The author's sober, rigorous analysis anchors a debate that seems to be squirming from the grip of most media. A great reminder that fear and hate are not the only tools used to sell books these days--a substantial work that should be read by anyone with an interest in how politics works.""Finacial Times," March 6, 2011 "An illuminating distillation of the power relationships shaping a world in which the state with the best military can lose to the adversary with the better story...Nye makes sense of these new complexities." "Washington"" Times," April 5, 2011 "Nye's writing style is accessible even when his subject grows more complex.... A helpful primer to better underst

One of America's leading policy intellectuals, who coined the term soft power, looks at what has happened to American power from the time of Kennedy in the 60's through the present day. In the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev, power in the US was expressed in terms of nuclear missiles, industrial Capacity, numbers of men under arms, and tanks lined up ready to cross the plains of Eastern Europe. By 2010, none of these factors confer power in the same way: industrial capacity seems an almost a Victorian virtue, and cyber threats are wielded by non-state actors. Politics changed, and the nature of power - defined as the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes you want - had changed dramatically. Power is not static, its story is of shifts and innovation, technologies and relationships. Josephy Nye is a long-term analyst of power and a hands-on practitioner in government. Many of his ideas have been at the heart of recent debates over the role America should play in the world: his concept of 'soft power' has been adopted by leaders from Britain to China: 'smart power' has been adopted as the bumper-sticker for the Obama Administration's foreign policy. This book is the summary of his work, as relevant to general readers as to foreign policy specialists. It is a vivid narrative that delves behind the elusive faces of power to discover its enduring nature in the cyber age.