Joseph S. Nye Jr., an influential figure in the development of the American national security policy, which wrote seminal books on foreign affairs, occupied jobs at Harvard and the government, and invented the term “soft power” – the idea that the global influence of America 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 managed John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard and has occupied senior jobs in the Carter and Clinton administrations.
His thought radiated far from the ivory tower: he influenced diplomats and national security officials and, as a paternal figure with a soft voice, he was a mentor for many people who made careers in government.
“Joe Nye was a giant: a giant because his ideas have shaped the visions of the world of several generations of political decision -makers – but even more a giant because his personal touch has shaped our life choices,” said Jake Sullivan, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in a text message.
Mr. Nye developed the concept of soft power in the late 1980s to explain how America’s ability to bring other nations to do what it wanted to rest more than the power of its military or its economy; It also derives from American values.
“Seduction is always more effective than coercion,” he explained in an interview in 2005. “And many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunities, are deeply attractive.”
Soft Power’s tools include diplomacy, economic assistance and trustworthy information, such as those provided in Voice of America. He exposed his thought in a 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”.
Mr. Nye’s insight has won a wide currency with political leaders through ideological and national borders. He was cited favorably by the Conservative Republican Newt Gingrich and the President of China in 2007. Mr. Nye was invited to dinner in Beijing, where the Minister of Foreign Affairs asked him how China could increase his soft power. Australia has revised its diplomacy to incorporate the soft power, telling the history of Australian culture in the world.
“Joe’s founding book on the soft power is one of the very few books of a political scientist on international relations that has had an impact on the real world beyond the academic world,” said Derek Shearer, professor of diplomacy in the Western College of Los Angeles.
In 2009, during his confirmation hearings as a candidate for the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used the term “smart power” 13 times – Another concept that Mr. Nye has developed, which means a combination of the tools of hard power and soft – explaining how it would fight against Islamic terrorism in the world.
Mr. Nye’s influence could be assessed by tributes to him who were posted on social networks immediately after his death. Antony Blinken, secretary of state of the Biden administration, described it as “a friend and a mentor of many, including me”. Admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme commander of NATO allies, said: “Joe Nye was incredibly kind to me throughout my life.”
Mr. Nye worked for the first time in the government in the Carter administration as a state under security from 1977 to 1979. He returned to Washington under President Bill Clinton in 1993 to preside over the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the president.
In 1994, he was appointed assistant secretary for international security affairs at the Pentagon, where he and his colleagues developed a new policy in Asia at a low point in American-Japan relations.
What has become known as the “NYE initiative” confirmed the American military engagement in Asia and the American-Japanese alliance as a bulwark against China and North Korea.
Mr. Nye was also known as an intellectual father of neoliberalism in foreign policy. A 1977 book which he wrote with Robert Keohane, “power and interdependence”, stressed that military power was a decreased force and that nations could ensure a peaceful world through global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The book was allocated to government graduate students for four decades.
Mr. Nye, who joined the Harvard faculty in 1964, was dean of the Kennedy School of Government from 1995 to 2004. He put pressure for more women and republican voices in his ranks.
“He helped integrate this institution into that it is today, while transforming the field of international relations,” wrote Jeremy Weinstein, the current dean of the Kennedy school, to his colleagues in an email this week.
In his professional ideas and roles, Mr. Nye was a founding member of the American foreign policy establishment, a term sometimes used with Péjorance to signify a bipartite consensus of the Republicans and Democrats on the importance of globalization in economic and global affairs. He was a leader in international non -governmental organizations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Aspen strategy group and the Atlantic Council.
President Trump, since he first set up a populist wave in power in 2016, denounced national security professionals, rejecting them as an elite of desperate Washington to keep power. Mr. Nye saw a decline America under Mr. Trump.
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. was born on January 19, 1937 in South Orange, NJ, his father was a merchant of bonds at Wall Street, and his mother, Else (Ashwell) Nye, had been secretary when she met her future husband. A Puritan ancestor, Benjamin Nye, arrived in Massachusetts in 1639.
Joe, as Mr. Nye was called, is a graduate of Morristown Prep, now the Morristown Beard School, in Morristown, NJ, and the University of Princeton, where he obtained a BA in 1958. He won a Rhodes scholarship at the University of Oxford, where he did a graduate job. He won his doctorate. In Harvard political science with a thesis on East Africa emerging from colonialism.
In 1961, he married Mary Harding, known as Molly, whom he had met when they were adolescents. She directed an art gallery in Lexington, Mass., Then became Doorte at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington when the couple lived in the capital. Their main residence was a house in Lexington Battle Green, in Lexington, Mass.
Mrs nye Died in December 2024.
In addition to his son Daniel, Mr. Nye is survived by two other sons, John and Benjamin, and nine grandchildren.
Mr. Nye designed the soft power while working at his kitchen table in response to a successful book in 1988 from the British historian Paul Kennedy, “The rise and the fall of the great powers”, “ Who argued that the United States was in long-term decline.
Mr. Nye did not accept this dark conclusion.
He presented his answer in a 1990 book, “Bound to Diader”, then in more detail in “Soft Power”, which argued that America has an attractive call for the world not only because of Coca-Cola or Hollywood films, but also because it represents democracy, the rule of law and, to its best, humanitarianism.
This year, Mr. Nye watched President Trump, less restricted than during his first mandate, eviscerated the basic instruments of the soft power, including food and medical aid to foreign countries and the voice of America.
“I’m afraid that President Trump will not understand the soft power”, Mr. Nye said to cnn In an interview a few days before his death. “Think about the Cold War – American nuclear deterrence and American troops in Europe were crucial. But when the Berlin Wall fell, it did not fall under an artillery dam. It fell under the hammers and the bulldozers exercised by people whose mind had been changed by the voice of America and the BBC.”