BOOK REVIEWS

摘要

Joseph Nye is famous for coining one of the most significant terms in twenty-first-century political and international policy discourse - soft power. Today it appears in newspapers and magazines, on television, in speeches and documents by public officials and policy-makers from Washington to Beijing, and, of course, in academic debates about the nature of power itself. This book is Nye's endeavour both to take on some of his academic critics and to assert the growing centrality of soft power not only for understanding the changing world system, but also for prescribing a new approach for foreign policy-makers, especially in the US. In the latter vein, he also sets out a more developed version of his concept of 'smart power', an idea that has resonated increasingly in foreign policy discourse. The book has already been showcased in the American media, for example on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS on 23 January 2011, where it was described as arguing that America was not declining. But it is more far-reaching and nuanced than this claim implies. Rather, American power in a world where 'the future of power' is continually evolving will in Nye's view depend crucially on the conceptualisation and implementation of the kind of 'soft' and 'smart' power approaches he prescribes.