Smart Power - Origin

Origin

The origin of the term "smart power" is under debate and has been attributed to both Suzanne Nossel and Joseph Nye.

Suzanne Nossel, Deputy to Ambassador Holbrooke at the United Nations during the Clinton administration, is credited with coining the term in an article in Foreign Affairs entitled, "Smart Power: Reclaiming Liberal Internationalism", in 2004.

Joseph Nye, however, claims that smart power is a term he introduced in 2003 "to counter the misperception that soft power alone can produce effective foreign policy." He created the term to name an alternative to the hard power-driven foreign policy of the Bush administration. Nye notes that smart power strategy denotes the ability to combine hard and soft power depending on whether hard or soft power would be more effective in a given situation. He states that many situations require soft power; however, in stopping North Korea's nuclear weapons program, for instance, hard power might be more effective than soft power. In the words of the Financial Times, "to win the peace, therefore, the US will have to show as much skill in exercising soft power as it has in using hard power to win the war." Smart power addresses multilateralism and enhances foreign policy.

A successful smart power narrative for the United States in the twenty-first century, Nye argues, will not obsess over power maximization or the preservation of hegemony. Rather, it will find "ways to combine resources into successful strategies in the new context of power diffusion and the 'rise of the rest.'" A successful smart power strategy will provide answers to the following questions: 1) What goals or outcomes are preferred? 2) What resources are available and in which contexts? 3) What are the positions and preferences of the targets of attempts at influence? 4) Which forms of power behavior are most likely to succeed? 5) What is the probability of success?