Joseph S. Nye Jr., an influential figure in the configuration of the American national security policy, who wrote seminal books on foreign matters, had the best works in Harvard and in the government, and coined the term “soft power”, the idea that the global influence of the United States was more than its military power, died Tuesday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 88 years old.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Daniel.
Sometimes considered the Dean of American Political Science, Mr. Nye directed the John F. Kennedy Government School in Harvard and maintained high -level works in the Carter and Clinton administrations.
His thought radiated away from the ivory tower: Hey influenced national security diplomats and officials, and, as a soft and paternal figure, it was a mentor for many who made careers in the government.
“Joe Nye was a giant: a giant because my ideas shaped the worldviews of multiple generations of policy formulators, but even more a giant because his personal touch shaped our life choices,” Jake Sullivan Jriden Jrural Security Jrurity Jrurity Text Jrural Message.
Mr. Nye developed the concept of soft power at the end of the 1980s to explain how the ability of the United States to make other nations do what he wanted more than the power of their army or economy; It also derives from US values.
“Seduction is always more effective than coercion,” he explained in a 2005 interview. “And many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunities, are deeply seductive.”
Soft electrical tools include diplomacy, economic assistance and reliable information, such as that provider in Voice of America transmissions. He presented his thoughts in a 2004 book, “Soft Power: the means for success in world politics.”
Mr. Nye’s vision won a wide currency with political leaders through idological and national borders. He was cited favorably by the conservative Republican Newt Giningrich and the president of China, in 2007. Mr. Nye was invited to dinner in Beijing, where the Foreign Minister asked how China could increase his soft power. Australia reviewed his diplomacy to incorporate soft power, tell the history of Australian culture into the world.
“Joe’s seminal book about soft power is one of a political books on international relations that had an impact on the real world beyond the academy,” said Derek Shearer, a professor or diplomacy in Western College in an email.
In 2009, during his confirmation hearings as nominated for the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used the term “intelligent power” 13 times, another concept that Mr. Nye developed, which means a communication of the tools of hard and soft power, explaining how it would combat Islamic terrorism in the world.
The influence of Mr. Nye could be measured by the taxes that were published on social networks immediately after his death. Antony Shines, Secretary of State of the Biden Administration, described him as “a friend and mentor for many, including me.” Admiral James Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied commander of NATO, said: “Joe Nye was an incredible child for me during my life.”
Mr. Nye worked for the first time in the Government in the Carter Administration as deputy under Secretary of State from 1977 to 1979. He returned to Washington under President Bill Clinton in 1993 to preside over the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the estimates for the President.
In 1994, he was appointed Undersecretary of International Security Affairs in the Pentagon, where he and his colleagues developed a new Asian policy at a low point of relations between the United States and Japan.
What was known as the “Nye Initiative” affirmed the United States military commitment with Asia and the American-Japan alliance as a bulwark against China and North Korea.
Mr. Nye was also known as an intellectual father or neoliberalism in foreign policy. A 1977 book that Robert Keohane wrote, “power and interdependence,” emphasized that military power was a force in decline and that nations could guarantee a peaceful world through the global institutions SH as the United Trade Organization. The book was assigned to graduate governing students for four decades.
Mr. Nye, who joined the Faculty of Harvard in 1964, was dean of the Kennedy Government School from 1995 to 2004. He pushed for more women and republican voices in his ranks.
“He helped to turn this institution into what it is today, while transforming the field of international relations,” wrote Jeremy Weinstein, the current dean of the Kennedy school, colleagues in an email this week.
In his ideas and professional roles, Mr. Nye was a founding member of the United States foreign policy establishment, a term that is sometimes used pejoratively to mean a bipartisan consensus by Republicans and Democrats about the importance of globalization in economic and world affairs. He was the leader of international non -governmental organizations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Aspen Strategy Group and the Atlantic Council.
President Trump, since it was for the first time a populist wave to power in 2016, has denounced conventional national security professionals, dismissing them as an elite of Washington desperate for clinging to power. Nye saw a Declive America under Mr. Trump.
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. was born on January 19, 1937 in South Orange, NJ his father was a bond merchant on Wall Street, and his mother, otherwise (Ashwell) Nye, had been a secretary when she with her future husband. A Puritan ancestor, Benjamin Nye, arrived in Massachusetts in 1639.
Joe, as Mr. Nye was called, graduated from Morristown Prep, now the Barba Morristown school in Morristown, NJ, and Princeton University, where he obtained a degree in 1958. He won a Rhodes scholarship for the work of the University of Oxford. He obtained his ph.D. In Harvard’s political sciences with a dissertation on Eastern Africa that arises from colonialism.
In 1961, he married Mary Harding, known as Molly, whom he had when they were teenagers. He directed an art gallery in Lexington, Massachusetts, and then became a teacher at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington when the couple lived in the capital. His main residence was a home in Lexington Battle Green, in Lexington, Massachusetts. They also had a 900 acres farm in North Sandwich, NH, where Mr. Nye cultivated vegetables, hunted deer and made Arce syrup.
Mrs. Nye died in December 2024.
Son of the bears Daniel, Mr. Nye survives two other children, John and Benjamin, and nine granddaughters.
Mr. Nye conceived soft power while working on the table in his kitchen in a response to a more selling book of 1988 by British historian Paul Kennedy, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”, what the United States was in long -term decline.
Mr. Nye did not accept that gloomy conclusion.
He cuts his response in a 1990 book, “Bound to lead”, and then more in “soft power”, which the United States exercises a seductive attraction for the world not only Beee or Coca-Cola or Hollywood movies, Bull, Bull and also and also and also and also, also, also in anyone, also in anyone, also in any other, also in any other, also in any other, also in any other, also in any other, also in any other. His best, humanitarianism.
This year, Mr. Nye observed with a deep dismay like President Trump, less restricted than in his first term, destroyed the basic instruments of the soft power of the United States, including food and medical aid to foreign countries and the voice of the United States.
“I’m afraid that President Trump does not understand soft power,” Nye told CNN in an interview days before his death. “Think of the Cold War: the American nuclear deterrence and the US troops in Europe were crucial. But when the Berlin wall fell, it did not fall under a flood of artillery. It fell under Hammens and the excavators had the United States and the BBC.”
