Joseph Nye: ‘Trump could destroy the United States’ soft power’

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989 and throughout the long decade that followed, the United States enjoyed unrivaled power and prestige. They were years of triumphalism, marked by Clintonomics, the end of history and the first American century. But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, put an abrupt end to that dream and over the next decade, the country’s reputation suffered, thanks to endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From his perch at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, a kind of observatory of global power, Joseph Nye, 87, watched with concern as president George W. Bush took on Iraq with nearly no international support, and without the ample consensus that had backed the Persian Gulf War with the country in 1991. That year, the United States led a 34-nation alliance that was able to force Saddam Hussein to remove his army from Kuwait in a matter of weeks.

Nye is well-aware that power comes in many forms, not all of them tied to brute force. An understanding of that complexity is essential for any leader. And so, he set out to write Soft Power (2004), hoping to flesh out a concept he first coined in 1990 to explain how the United States’ strength did not solely lie in its economic reach and unprecedented military force, but also had to do with a third dimension of power that can be defined as the ability to achieve what you want through attraction, rather than coercion or payment. Today, “soft power” is such a widespread concept that it is namechecked on TV series like Hulu’s Tell Me Lies, in which a professor manages to persuade the protagonist’s ex-girlfriend that soft power can be as effective as hard power — and much more seductive.

After a life spent between the academy and state (he was part of both the Carter and Clinton administrations), Nye is now retired. Nonetheless, he maintains an office at the Kennedy School from which he has been following the rollercoaster presidential campaign. He doesn’t hide his gloom over the possibility of a second Trump presidency. It would be a “disaster,” he says, bluntly. From Nye’s perspective, one of the biggest risks of Trump is that he could case irreversible harm to the United States’ soft power by mistreating and punishing its military and economic allies.

Question. I’d like to start by refreshing readers on what soft power is and how it works. Why is it so important for a nation’s success and how has it shaped the United States’ position on the international stage?

Answer. Soft power is the ability to affect others to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. And it’s only one type of power. The others [like militaristic or economic hard power] can be more important in the short run, but in the long run, attraction matters. If you think back to the Cold War, for example, the Berlin Wall did not come down under a barrage of artillery, it came down under hammers and bulldozers wielded by people whose minds had been changed by attraction to Western ideas. This suggests that in the long term, soft power can make a big difference. The Soviet Union lost a good deal of its soft power in 1960s and 1970s. If you think of the invasion of Hungary and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviets were able to use hard power to prevail immediately, but the undercut their own soft power, which hurt them in the end.

Q. In the long run, their power was weakened.

A. They say in the Cold War, there were two empires, a Soviet empire and an American empire. But the difference was that the American empire was an empire by invitation. That ability of the United States to attract allies and friends has been very important for the American national interest, but also for international order. That’s the argument one could make for soft power.

Q. As you explain in your book, three decades ago, the United States was at the height of its soft power. It wielded tremendous appeal, globally. Today, many argue that its influence has declined. How has U.S. soft power evolved in the last 30 years?

A. U.S. soft power goes up and down. I’ve just written a memoir called A Life in the American Century, in which I describe what it’s been like to watch the changes of American soft power. Americans had a lot of soft power in the 1950s. Then, when they got involved with Vietnam, they lost a lot of their soft power and became very unpopular. People were marching in the streets against the United States around the world. And then it recovers in the 1970s and 1980s and you have an increase in American soft power that goes through the end of the Cold War. It declines again with the invasion of Iraq, and then it goes back up again with the election of Obama, down under the election of Trump and then recovers somewhat under the election of Biden. I think if Trump wins the November 5 election, American soft power will decline again. It’s not linear, it’s cyclical.

Q. But how does this internal conflict, the division between opposing views of the United States in the war, affect soft power? I mean, from within, inside-out.

A. Internal divisions are not new. During the Cold War, we had McCarthyism. And in the 1960s, we had the Vietnam protests, which were quite severe. A bomb went off in my office at Harvard. So, we’ve had internal conflicts before, and they have an effect on American soft power, but it’s worth noticing that what attracts others is not just government policies. It’s also civil society. Even when the Americans may be unattractive because of something like the government’s policy on Vietnam, when people were marching through the streets, they were not singing the Communists’ Internacionale. They were singing Martin Luther King’s We Shall Overcome, a song from American civil society, which indicated that there were still some aspects of the United States that attracted some, even when the government’s policies repelled others. I think the current period of extreme polarization will test that. Will American civil society remain strong enough that it will still attract others, even if Trump is returned? If he follows the actions he’s talked about, if he weakens American democracy, that will certainly hurt American soft power.

Q. That’s a big question.

A. Nobody knows the answer.

Q. Nobody knows the answer. But as an immigrant, someone who was accepted and received huge opportunities in this society, I feel sorry about what I see. This extreme discourse is scary.

A. Oh, I agree with you. If Trump wins the election, that will lead to a very bad four years. If we think in terms of decades, I think that the big question is, will it be a turning point? Ten years from now, in 2034, will we say, “That was the beginning of the end”? Or will we say, “We went through a very bad spell, but things are looking up again”? No one knows the answer to that question. But if you’d asked that question in 1970 or 1968, you would not have predicted want the world would look like or the country would look like in 1978 or 1980.

Q. Even after September 11, which was kind of turning point in itself, the United States was able to get back part of its soft power. Still, this moment has to do with an internal dynamic. So my question is, how do such divisive political views as the ones that are present now emerge and what could happen if Trump wins or Harris wins?

A. It’s part of the price of democracy that you have people who can express extreme ideas and attract followers. As I mentioned, the period in the early ‘50s was when there was a great fear of Communism and the Cold War led to McCarthyism, a fear that was exposed and exploited by a demagogue, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Eventually McCarthyism overreached and McCarthy was brought to a halt by his own failures. Whether that will be true of Trump or not, we don’t know. But the cycles of internal divisions are not new. For example, as I describe in my memoir, when I was a child, I lived in a rural area that was very Republican and some of my little friends, when they learned that Franklin Roosevelt had died, said, “Good, the tyrant is dead.” Extreme polarization is not new, and there are interesting questions of why it’s gotten so bad, but it helps to keep a historical perspective.

Q. What would be the difference between a Trump administration and a Harris administration in terms of polarization?

A. Trump would drive even more polarization because his leadership style is extremely polarizing. Kamala Harris, if she became president, would be polarizing because many on the right would not accept her, but her leadership style would be different.

Q. What would be the difference between a Trump administration and a Harris administration in terms of the role of the United States in the world?

A. Trump has more or less captured the Republican Party. He attracts a very extreme set of followers. When the moderate Republicans try to stand against him, he mobilizes his followers in the primary elections to support an extremist, what we might call a MAGA Republican, to defeat the moderate Republicans. And this is why you have someone like Liz Cheney, who is very conservative and was the third or fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. When she opposed Trump, he organized candidates against her and she was defeated. The fact that Trump has essentially weakened or undercut the traditional conservatives means that he has fewer checks and balances on what he does, and so many of the threats that he’s making are about using government agencies like the Justice Department to punish his enemies. In Trump’s prior period in government, he had a number of traditional Republicans, conservatives who tended to hold him back somewhat. The fear is that he will not be surrounded by these people, but by more extreme Republicans, the sycophants. There are good reasons to worry about what this may look like.

Q. Trump’s immigration policies, such as closed borders and deportation, have been widely criticized for their impact both domestically and internationally. If Trump is elected and enforces closed borders and deports millions of people, how would that affect the United States’ ability to exercise soft power?

A. It’ll have a negative effect, both economically and on soft power. If you really try to deport a million people or more, it’s going to have a very severe effect on labor markets and on the economy. But I think it’s also going to have a strong negative effect on the attractiveness of the United States. I describe in my memoir a conversation I once had with Lee Kuan Yew, who was the former prime minister of Singapore. I asked him, did he think that China would surpass the United States? And he said no. I said, why? And he said, because while China can draw on the talents of 1.3 billion people, the United States can draw on the talents of 7.5 billion people, the whole world. And then it can recombine them with diversity, which means a creativity that you can’t accomplish with a narrow ethnic nationalism. That attractiveness of the United States to people from all over the world and the ability assimilate and recombine them, even though it goes through its bad spells from time to time of reaction against immigrants, is an important source of American soft power. If we try to close ourselves off from immigration, I think we’ll lose that source of soft power as well as undercut the economy.

Q. Protectionism and trade wars were recurring themes under the first Trump administration. How do you think a new trade war with China could affect the soft power and global standing of the United States?

A. From 2017 to 2021, Trump put tariffs not just on Chinese goods, where you could say there was already a conflict. He also put tariffs against Europe and Japan and threatened Mexico. The danger is that Trump’s tariff policy will lead to retaliation, but more importantly, weaken American alliances. If you add together Russia and China, they represent about 20% of the world economy. But if you add together the U.S. and Europe and Japan and South Korea, you’re talking about 50% of the world economy. So as long as the Americans keep their alliances, I think their prospects are very good for the long run. But if we foolishly use trade wars to weaken our alliances, then I think we will undercut our own position in the world.

Q. And not only trade alliances, but also military alliances like NATO. That’s a major issue. How do you see the threat of Trump withdrawing from NATO, and what could that lead to in Europe and with Russia?

A. I don’t think Trump is going to withdraw from NATO. He talks that way, but NATO is popular enough in Congress and with the public that he wouldn’t actually withdraw. Trump can properly say that his threats have led NATO allies to contribute more to their defense budgets, so the period in which NATO allies would take a free ride by saying, let the Americans pay for everything is over. But if Trump undercuts the Ukrainians, for example — he says he will settle the war in a matter of a few days, that can only be done by selling out Ukraine’s interests and making Ukraine settle on Putin’s terms. I think that would be quite damaging to the alliance.

Q. If you had Trump in front of you right now, what advice would you give him to take advantage of U.S. soft power and strengthen the country’s image as a democratic nation?

A. I would say, be tolerant at home of people who oppose you. Show that we practice what we preach about democracy. Your behavior at home has a strong effect on how you’re perceived overseas. Then I would say, when you talk about “make America great again,” it sounds like everybody else is second. Instead of focusing on that, you should find ways to see where the American interest and those of our allies are aligned. Rather than expressing American national interest as though it is zero sum, think of it in ways you can express it to be a positive sum. That’s what I would say to him, but I would expect he wouldn’t listen.

Q. What measures could help improve U.S. global image? And what factors could worsen its decline?

A. It’s a mixture of internal and external. If the United States continues to succeed economically, and right now, it has the most vibrant economy among the G7 and the OECD, that attracts others. And if it remains open to immigration and remains democratic, then I expect its soft power will persist. And on the international side, I think helping to take a lead on responding to climate change and developing and maintaining institutions. And those are the reasons why I worry about the return of Trump.

Q. Kamala Harris represents a more multilateral and soft-power-friendly vision. If elected, what advice would you give her to make the most of soft power in her global leadership?

A. I would say, make sure things are going well at home, which I think she has already been doing as vice-president. On the international side, I’d say, become a leader again on issues like climate change. Maintain American alliances. Don’t desert Ukraine. These are all issues which I think will help American soft power.

Q. Will this be the second American century?

A. I think it’s impossible. The American century starts in 1945 at the end of World War II, and we’re 80 years past that. So, I don’t necessarily see a second American century. But I do think the Americans will be the preeminent power for quite some time into this century.

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