The Future of Power - by Joseph S Nye (Paperback)

About the Book

The influential policy thinker who coined the term "soft power" examines the changing nature of power since the Cold War, the new ways in which it is exercised, and how those changes impact America's role in the world.

Book Synopsis

The Future of Power examines what it means to be forceful and effective in a world in which the traditional ideas of state power have been upended by technology, and rogue actors.

Power evolves. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, unsurpassed in military strength and ownership of world resources, the United States was indisputably the most powerful nation in the world. But the global information age is creating new opportunities for developing countries to increase their share of world resources and security threats such as cyberterrorism that render traditional markers of power obsolete. To remain at the pinnacle of world power, the United States must adopt a strategy that considers the impact of the internet on power resources across the world. In The Future of Power, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a longtime analyst of power and a hands-on practitioner in government, examines what it means to be powerful in the twenty-first century and illuminates the road ahead.

Review Quotes

"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."--Financial Times

"As power moves from west to east and from the palaces of dictators to the street, it is not just the identities of power brokers that are changing: so is the very meaning of power. No one is better placed to explain these trends than the scholar-statesman Joe Nye... The Future of Power contains important essays on both 'cyber power' and 'American decline, ' but what is most useful is Nye's subtle exegesis of the mechanics of more conventional forms of power.--New Statesman

"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."--Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

"Nye is a master of his field at the height of his power."--Washington Post

"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."--Foreign Affairs

"Painstaking... Rigorous... Mr. Nye sets out a taxonomy of twenty-first-century power ...casting doubt on the idea that America is in precipitate decline."--Economist

"While the British generally take a wary attitude to international gurus, it is worth bearing in mind that what Nye... think(s) today has a habit of becoming the global consensus tomorrow."--Mary Dejevksy, Independent

"A concise, forceful statement of what Nye refers to as the liberal realist position in the US academy and in US politics... (which) paints a plausible scenario for the continuance of the US at the heart of the international system."--Times Higher Education Supplement

About the Author

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (1937-2025) served as dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. He is the author of several books, including Soft Power and Bound to Lead.