Joseph Nye Quotes

Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. is an American political scientist. He is the co-founder, along with Robert Keohane, of the international relations theory of neoliberalism, developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he explained the distinction between hard power and soft power, and pioneered the theory of soft power. His notion of "smart power" became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration, and more recently the Obama Administration. He is the former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he currently holds the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus. In October 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is also a member of the Defense Policy Board.He has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1964. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a foreign fellow of The British Academy. Nye is also a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy. The 2011 TRIP survey of over 1700 international relations scholars ranks Joe Nye as the sixth most influential scholar in the field of international relations in the past twenty years. He was also ranked as most influential in American foreign policy. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him to its list of top global thinkers. The magazine's valued reporter Daniel Drezner wrote: "All roads to understanding American foreign policy run through Joe Nye." In September 2014, Foreign Policy reported that the international relations scholars and policymakers both ranked Nye as one of the most influential scholars. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. January 1937
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Joseph Nye: 27   quotes 1   like

Famous Joseph Nye Quotes

“Governments now have to share the stage with actors who can use information to enhance their soft power and press governments directly, or indirectly by mobilizing their publics.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 8, The Information Revolution and the Diffusion of Power, p. 246.

“The international system consists not only of states. The international political system is the pattern of relationships among the states.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 2, Origins of the Great Twentieth Century Conflicts, p. 34.

“Some economists believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated by bad monetary policy and lack of American leadership. Britain was too weak to maintain an open international economy, and the United States was not living up to its new responsibilities.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 7, Globalization and Interdependence, p. 218.

“The best hope for the future is to ask what is being determined as well as who determines it.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 6, Intervention, Institutions, and Regional and Ethnic Conflicts, p. 169.

“Just as gunpowder and infantry penetrated and destroyed the medieval castle, so have nuclear missiles and the internet made the nation-state obsolete.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 265.

“Attention rather than information becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from the background clutter gain power.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 8, The Information Revolution and the Diffusion of Power, p. 252.

Joseph Nye Quotes about the world

“I have found in my experience in government that I could ignore neither the age-old nor the brand-new dimensions of world politics.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 2.

“The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 2.
Context: The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides. There is a certain logic of hostility, a dilemma about security that goes with interstate politics. Alliances, balance of power, and choices in in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia.

“The new world will not be neat, and you will have to live with that.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 282.
Context: The bipolar world is over, but it not going to be replaced by a unipolar world empire that the United States controls alone. The world is already economically multipolar, and there will be a diffusion of power as the information revolution progresses, interdependence increases, and transnational actors become more important. The new world will not be neat, and you will have to live with that.

Joseph Nye Quotes

“In foreign policy, as in medicine, leaders must “first do no harm.””

"Obama the Pragmatist" http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joseph-s--nye-defends-obama-s-approach-to-foreign-policy-against-critics-calling-for-a-more-muscular-approach, Project Syndicate (June 10, 2014).

“If Thucydides were plopped down in the Middle East or East Asia, he would probably recognize … the situation quite quickly.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 281.

“Systems can create consequences not intended by any other of their constituent actors.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 2, Origins of the Great Twentieth Century Conflicts, p. 34.

“Cooperation is difficult in the absence of communication.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 16.

“Any sense of global community is weak.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 4.

“Power, like love, is easier to experience than to define or measure.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 3, Balance of Power and World War I, p. 60.

“Anarchy means without government, but it does not necessarily mean chaos or total disorder.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 23.

“Power conversion is the capacity to convert potential power, as measured by resources, to realized power, as measured by the changed behavior of others.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 3, Balance of Power and World War I, p. 61.

“Humans sometimes make surprising choices, and human history is full of uncertainties.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 2, Origins of the Great Twentieth Century Conflicts, p. 51.

“The territorial state has not always existed in the past, so it need not necessarily exist in the future.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 262.

“At some point, consequences matter.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 21.

“Some observers feel it is harder to change public opinion in democracies than it is to change policies in totalitarian countries.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 5, The Cold War, p. 125.

“Some say precipitating events are like buses - they come along every ten minutes.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 3, Balance of Power and World War I, p. 77.

“The cure to misunderstanding history is to read more, not less.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 19.

“When words are both descriptive and prescriptive, thyey become political words used in struggles for power.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 6, Intervention, Institutions, and Regional and Ethnic Conflicts, p. 187.

“No one can tell the whole story of anything.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 1, Is There an Enduring Logic of Conflict in World Politics?, p. 19.

“Chamberlain's sins were not his intentions, but rather his ignorance and arrogance in failing to appraise the situation properly. And in that failure he was not alone.”

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 4, The Failure of Collective Security and World War II, p. 111.

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