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Soft Power

Better Essays

Soft Power
Author(s): Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Source: Foreign Policy, No. 80, Twentieth Anniversary, (Autumn, 1990), pp. 153-171
Published by: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148580
Accessed: 12/08/2008 12:33
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154.

Nye

What can we say about changes in the distribution of power resources in the coming decades? Political leaders often use the term
"multipolarity"to imply the return to a balance among a number of states with roughly equal power resources analogous to that of the nineteenth century. But this is not likely to be the situation at the turn of the century, for in terms of power resources, all the potential challengers except the United States are deficient in some respect. The Soviet Union lags economically,
China remains a less-developed country, Europe lacks political unity, and Japan is deficient both in military power and in global ideological appeal. If economic reforms reverse Soviet decline, if Japan develops a full-fledged nuclear and conventional military capability, or if Europe becomes dramatically more unified, there may be a return to classical multipolarity in the century. But barring such twenty-first changes, the United States is likely to retain a broader range of power resources-military, economic, scientific, cultural, and ideological
-than other countries, and the Soviet Union may lose its superpower status.

TheGreatPowerShift
The coming century may see continued
American preeminence, but the sources of power in world politics are likely to undergo major changes that will create new difficulties for all countries in achieving their goals. Proof of power lies not in resources

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