The Future of Power

The Future of Power by Joseph S. Nye Jr. New York: Public Affairs Books, 2011 320 pages $16.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about. --President Barack Obama, 26 January 2012 This monograph presents Professor Nye's current reflections on the nature of power in international affairs and how states and nonstate actors will manage or mismanage) the power available to them in the future. The author artfully blends theory and history, concept and concrete example to make his case. His conclusions are sensible, centrist, and unsurprising. Among other things, he makes an important contribution to our understanding of current trends, especially in his analysis of the debate over whether or not the United States is "in decline," either relatively or absolutely, in international affairs. Joseph Nye has been making important contributions to American foreign and national security policy and policy debates for decades. As a University Distinguished Service Professor and former dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Security Assistance, Science, and Technology (1977-79), chair of the National Intelligence Council (1993-94), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1994-95), and the author of many influential books, he has been one of the most prominent and consequential of the nation's public policy intellectuals. His theory of "soft power" introduced a new and useful concept to the panoply of political science tools for understanding the international system. With The Future of Power, Nye makes yet another important contribution to understanding how the international system works by updating his views on power while providing a refined version of his signature concept of soft power, offering significant arguments in the debates related to questions of America's alleged decline, and prescribing the use of "smart power" to US policymakers and implementers. As in so many of his previous efforts at explication, including his outstanding textbook, Understanding International Conflict: A Guide to Theory and Practice, Nye's writing in The Future of Power balances simplicity and accessibility with scholarly precision and documentation. Nye divides his exposition into three parts. First, in four chapters on "Types of Power," he describes the nature of power in international affairs, and deals with military, economic, and soft power in detail. Second, in two chapters on "Power Shifts," he educates his readers on the difference between power transition from one nation-state to another or others (a familiar historical process) and power diffusion from nation-states themselves to nonstate actors (a new phenomenon born of globalization and the information revolution): "the problem for all states in today's global information age," Nye says, "is that more things are happening outside the control of even the most powerful states. …