Joseph Nye's book titled, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,” heavily showcases the terms hard power and soft power. By Joseph Nye's account, hard power defines itself as being a term in which everyone is familiar with. Hard power, thus, deals with how a country's military and economic might can influence other's to change their pending positions (5). On the other hand, soft power is power that we are not as familiar with. Nye classifies soft power as “…the ability to get what you want through attractiveness rather than coercion or payments…it arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies” (x). Simply stated, hard power is normally done through force and soft power through appearance and charisma.
[...] One should keep in mind after reading this book that a serious shift in policy needs to be implemented in new administrations of the United States in order to maintain the charisma desired by the United States towards the rest of the world and, especially, to counteract our current War on Terrorism. International actors have the power and resources to work alongside the United States with the War on Terrorism and it is vital that the United States recognize and utilize that notion. [...]
[...] The purpose of Joseph Nye's discussion on the means to success in world politics is to show the discrepancies in American foreign policy in the form of power, whether it be hard or soft power. He intends to prove the importance of soft power by incorporating the downfalls of previous attempts at hard power, as well as the shortcomings of American foreign policy from current and former administrations. Nye focuses on the current Bush Administration for the majority of his discussion in order to show how stressing hard power has hindered the role of soft power and, consequently, the advancement and opinion towards the United States. [...]
[...] On the other hand, the graph about the Islamic world's view of the United States shows that the only high opinion given towards the United States correlates with an admiration of United States' technological and scientific advances (42). Lastly, the table about comparative investments in soft and hard power greatly supports Nye's claim in that the United States has a large and rather detrimental gap between spending on soft power and spending on military and defense (hard) power (124). In stating this, Nye succeeds in showing the United States foreign policy deficiencies towards the War on Terrorism and in general. [...]
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