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March 29, 2011

Joseph Nye; Soft Power, Smart Power; The Future of Power

By Rob Kall

The world has changed and that has changed the way power works, how it works, who has it, and how to use it.

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From flickr.com/photos/43398414@N04/6031452121/: Joseph Nye
From flickr.com/photos/43398414@N04/6031452121/: Joseph Nye
(Image by Unknown Owner)   Details   DMCA

I was introduced to Joseph Nye through a book he wrote the forward to, American Idol After Iraq, co-authored by hollywood uber producer Mike Medavoy. I started working on setting up this interview last summer. It was worth the effort. Nye gives a fascinating perspective on the ideas of hard power, soft power, diffusion of power, changing roles of the media and blogging, how China, India, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia will fit into the world's power balance, the role of Hollywood, the US dollar and more.



Wikipedia reports that a survey of 1700 international relations scholars ranked Joseph Nye as the sixth most influential scholar of the past twenty years, and the most influential on American foreign policy.

He is a consultant for the pentagon.

rough interview notes:

Let's start with some definitions.
What is soft power.
abiliity to affect others to get things you want.
Three ways-- threaten, pay or attract.

What is smart power?

ability to combine soft power and hard power.

What is power diffusion?
shift of power

And can you give some examples?

access to power
There are a lot more actors who can play on the world stage?

Wikileaks--

Assange--
should be asking how do we treat govt info-- classify less...

differences in costs of hard power and soft power.

US spends on public diplomacy spends on billion or 1.5 billion a year, about same as Britain and france-- US govt ahs a pygmy in the state dept.

Clinton and gates have realized this.

Agreed to transfer one aid program, but then was cut.


shift in foreign aid to military-- 15 to 22%
miltarization of foreign aid.
You wind up with a foreign policy with military tinge to foreigners


IN american political discourse, we think more of hard power, not soft power.

We need to learn to organize soft power to organize networks....

In an information age

Soft Power and narratives:
If you don't have a story, somebody else does. ....


,




If you ask questions about how do you influence others, how do you get them to work with you, having a powerful story is very important

In Cairo, the army had the guns, but the demonstrators in Tahrir square had the narrative. Each was the

Transition from top down to bottom up

That's the concept of power diffusion....

There's a new group of actors

Obama and Libya.
Danger of humanitarian aid.
Somalia and mission creep

Non-nation power.
non-state actors powered by information-- some very good, like Oxfam, some very bad, like Al Qaeda...

On 911 a non-state actor killed more Americans than Japan did at Pearl Harbor.

BLogging discussions... good
Cable TV.... bad-- trying to attract eyeballs through extremism.

ONly about 5 million who watch cable TV compared to 30 million who listen to Public radio.

Cable... and bloggers tend to set the public agenda.

Trust...

Attraction--
Reagan's shining city on the hill.
We attract others by what we do, how we behave and not by giving orders.

That can be very important to the United States.


Indonesia us positive impression went from 75% to 15%

Obama getting cooperation
If your policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, then they're attractive and their attractiveness is soft power.






Hard power can be diminished with diminished soft
counterproductive power.

Russian invasion of Georgia. They used hard power and because they didn't use soft power.

Judith McHale state-- web

If you had billions more for spending on soft power.
Civilian to civilian.

Much of American soft power is generated by civil society not by the government, everything from Harvard to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Let's talk about Hollywood. It's something where people come in touch with American through films than through American government actions.

Overall there is a tone in American films that tends to emphasize freedom and choice....
Famous story from the clld word-- soviet union would show films that they thought showed how corrupt American system was, used Twelve Angry men-- made people realize that a country that allowed self criticism had to be free.

Issue with China-- chinese censor films
India doesn't censor its films... Bollywood probably produces more films than Hollywood.

China could increase soft power by stopping.



You've talked about the need for internet diplomacy, on chat groups, blogs, etc Can you talk about that?

"There is a tradeoff on security and openness and we've erred on the side of security."

Exchange students and visas?


BIICs BRIC

Future of Chinese power.
The chinese aren't ten feet tall.

Equality in size does not equal equality in composition.

"If the US does not take the lead on climate change it's not going to get done."

exporting hope and fear:
"Optimism is an important asset."

liabilities of neglecting soft power-- depending on money and armaments. Dumb power? Rumsfeld?

triumphalism, declinism, exceptionalism?

American EXceptionalism

Puritans thought they were breaking off from the old, immoral world... so American exceptionalism has a long history. American founding fathers were also concerned with decline-- Dickens quote. Cycles of belief in decline.



Things to do to build soft power-- for Obama, for the BRIC nations, for corporations, for media...

How to restructure public diplomacy?
New government organizations?

Privatization of Soft Power-- Mike Medavoy's book.


Authority
diminishing, questioning.
Funding to study power-- soft, smart.
Index of soft power
800 articles in chinese on soft power.








Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

He is the co-founder of the Arc of Justice Alliance a platform designed to help organizations and individuals working for justice and a better world to discover each other and share resources and strategies, with the hopes that this will build their power.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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