Joseph Nye, who coined the term ‘soft power’, dead at 88

Joseph Nye, a versatile and influential political scientist and US policymaker who coined the term “soft power,” a concept of nations gaining dominance through attractiveness now scoffed at by President Donald Trump, has died, Harvard University announced Wednesday. He was 88.

Nye, who died Tuesday, first joined Harvard’s faculty in 1964 and served as dean of the Harvard Kennedy School as well as in positions under presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

The author of 14 books and more than 200 journal articles, the neo-liberal thinker studied topics as varied as arms control and pan-Africanism but became best known for developing the term “soft power” in the late 1980s.

As opposed to hard power, such as weapons and economic sanctions, soft power includes values and culture that can win over others.

“Soft power – getting others to want the outcomes that you want – co-opts people rather than coerces them,” Nye wrote in a 2004 book on the topic.

Among other examples, he pointed to growing US influence in Latin America when Franklin Roosevelt instituted a “good neighbour policy” and, conversely, how the Soviet Union lost Eastern Europe through brutality even as Moscow’s hard power grew.