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Full transcript of the discussion with Joseph S. Nye, political scholar, Distinguished Professor of the Harvard UniversityAlyona Getmanchuk, Director, Institute of World Policy

Good afternoon, dear ladies and gentlemen. Today I’m honored to introduce to you world-known scholar, Distinguished Professor of the Harvard University, author of the world bestseller “Soft Power”, Joseph Nye.

We would like to have some introductory remarks by Prof. Nye, and then will have a question-answers session. So, Professor Nye, the floor is yours.

Joseph S. Nye, Distinguished Professor of the Harvard University

Thank you. It’s very nice to be here today. I hope you’re having a wonderful day there in Ukraine, as your spring is even earlier than ours. There is still snow on the ground here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but we are looking forward to the beginning of spring.

I thought I would prefer to talk a little bit about the topic of my new book that I have here by my side, which is “The Future of Power”. And then, after 5-10 minutes of my explaining this, we could proceed to general conversation back and forth. Is that agreeable? If so, I’d like to begin.

This new book, I have written, is about the future of power. Let my start by the defining of power. The power is the ability to affect other to get outcomes that you want. You can do this basically in three ways. You can do this with coercion, or threats, sometimes called “sticks”. You can also affect others to get what you want through pays, the way, sometimes we call “carrots”. But you can also get what you want by getting others to want the same thing through persuasion or attraction. And that is what I call soft power.

So, if you look at the ability to get what you want without using coercion or paying, that is soft power. Very often people make a mistake, thinking that in world politics it’s only hard power that matters. For example, great Oxford historian A. J. P. Taylor once wrote a book “Struggle over Mastery in Europe: 1848-1918”. He defined a “great power” as a country which has the capacity to prevail in war. That made sense in 19th or 20th century. But in 21st century we should pay more attention to the power of narrative or story, which allows us to attract others, the soft power. So, instead of just saying that all, that matters, is whose army wins, it also matters, whose story wins. Let me give you an example. In the recent events that occurred in Egypt, the Army in Cairo had hard power as a military, but demonstrators in Tahrir Square had soft power of their ideas. So to appeal to Egypt you have to appeal to the government, in relation to hard power, but what you also need is to pay an attention to the ideas, that brought people to Tahrir Square with soft power. If you think about stability, Obama Administration was trying to keep good relations with the military, to whom it provided military assistance and aid, but it also supported good relations with the demonstrators. The Army may enforce stability for a short time, but if you think about a decade, or so, you have to appeal to the next generation, younger generation that was demonstrating in the Square. So success in dealing with the country Egypt requires not only using both hard power of military assistance, but also soft power of the narrative of democracy and human right, that appeal to the demonstrators. So that is an illustration of how in the 21st century you need to have what I call smart power, which is the ability to combine hard power and soft power. You have to be able to combine both the power of coercion or payments with the power of narrative and values, which attract and persuade others. Now if have a look at the way the world is today, if we say how the power is distributed in the 21st century, it’s worth noticing that it is distributed differently in different areas and different contexts. Power always depends on context. When you make a statement about power, it is very difficult to make it general to all situations. For example in the situation when the student may be the most powerful at the sport’s field and leader among the students, he may come back into the classroom, he is not so powerful, because he is not that smart. In that sense power depends on the context whether he is in the classroom or outside. The same concerns the international power. Sometimes we say that a country which has 10 thousand tanks is ten times stronger than a country which has 1 thousand tanks. That might be the true if you are fighting a battle in a dessert, like Iraq, but it can be not true if you are fighting a battle in the swamp like Vietnam, which the Americans discovered in the Vietnam War. To say that certain resources provide power depends upon the context.

If we look at the way the power is distributed in the world today, sometimes people ask the question if it is bipolar, or unipolar, or multipolar. The answer depends on which context we are talking about. We should think about the three-dimensional chessboard, on which we play chess on three boards horizontally and vertically at the same time. On the top board is military power among states. The world is largely unipolar. The United States is the only country which is able to project military power with global reach. And I think it is likely to state that way for the couple of decades. But if you go on the middle board – the economic relations between states – the world is multipolar, like it has been a decade or more. On the economic board, this is where Europe, using the institutions of the European Union, can act as an entity. And when Europe acts as one, it has an economy larger than that of the United States. So other entities can check or balance American power in the economic level: you have Europe, as I mentioned, there are also China, Japan and others. So the top board is unipolar, the middle board is multipolar. Now let’s go to the bottom board of transnational relations, which we think is outside of the control of governments and represents the financial flows, terrorists groups, impersonal forces, like climate change or pandemics. All of these present serious challenge to countries today. But to say that the power on this board of the transnational relations is unipolar or multipolar is a big mistake. Power on this board is chaotically distributed. The only way in which you can manage these problems is the cooperation. Governments have to cooperate. And in that sense that is why the soft power is becoming increasingly important. You ought to appeal to and attract others into the networks and institutions which allow the cooperation to deal with issues like terrorism, climate change, financial security, cyber security. No country can do this on its own. You can only do that by working with other countries.
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That is why when we think of power in 21st century, it is very important to realize that the context of power differs with each of the different sets domains. Let me demonstrate that with the case of the Far East. One of the things I describe in my book is what I call “the recovery of Asia”. The fact is that Asia is now coming back to that type of proportions in the world economy that it had before the industrial revolution. If you took a snapshot of the world in year 1800, you’d see that Asia represented the half of the world’s population and more than the half of the world product. But if we take the snapshot of 1900, Asia represented only 20% of world product. And what we see in 21st century is what we call “return to normal”. By the middle of this century Asia will probably represent more than half of the world population and more than half of world product. Some people sometimes say that this is the rise of China. Well, it is much more than that. It starts with Japan, goes to Korea, then to smaller Asian countries. Today people focus on China, India will come next. But many times people claim that this “rise of China” presents a big threat to the U.S. I don’t think so. In practice, where we do need to balance a Chinese power is in the Asian region, because many countries, like Japan, India, Vietnam are worried about the rise of the Chinese hard power, and that is why they want the American presence in the region. In addition to that you also need to cooperate with China. When we think about the climate change, China has become a superpower of the climate change. It produces more carbon-dioxides every year than USA. China is also very important for financial stability, cyber stability. So you do need cooperation with China. Essentially, what we have to realize is that, we have to deal with two types of power at the same time. We have to deal with the problems that come from “zero-some” competition. That can be illustrated by the American Navy balancing Chinese Naval Power in the South China Sea. But we also have to deal with power that comes from cooperation, which is organizing jointly with other countries to deal with some issues like climate change. What means we have to understand power as partly zero-some, and partly positive one. Not just power over others, but power with others. In other words, if the United States, or Ukraine, or Russia, or any other country wants to do something about climate change, they can not do this by themselves, but only with others. So as China reduces its capacity to reduce the carbon-intensity, it will be good not only for China, but also for Ukraine, and the USA, and Russia and Europe. So that is power with others, but not over others.
What I’m trying to summarize in this book is that in an age of the globalization and informational revolution it is extremely important to realize that one no longer can say that the power is not only whose army wins, its also whose story wins. Regarding the soft power, it is important to organize the networks for cooperation to deal with issues that come from the diffusion of power on the transnational bottom chessboard I described. And thinking that power is only bombs and bullets is really awkward when we think of power in the 21st century.

So that is my opening set of comments, but I will be very interested to hear your reactions, alternative views or objections.

Alyona Getmanchuk:

Thank you very much for such interesting opening remarks and the presentation of your new book. I’d like to start the discussion with the question, that is outlined in the title of our videoconference, that is the question of the soft power of Ukraine. It would be great is you could say few words on that. Weren’t you surprised by the title “Soft Power of Ukraine”? Do you think Ukraine has got this capacity or potential? If it does, which countries can it affect?

Joseph Nye:

Well, every country, indeed every individual, has the capacity for soft power. If we think of our daily behavior, we don’t always give commands; we also try to persuade, attract people to get what we want. So everyone is capable of soft power in any group, and a country is capable of soft power. It means that Ukraine has the capacity to generate soft power as well. Very often soft power which makes country attractive comes from its culture, so the aspects of traditional Ukrainian culture can attract others, as well as its history. That is why Ukraine can develop its soft power by promoting its culture and living up to values of democracy and human rights, and by policies, which are taking into account the interests of others and therefore are regarded as legitimate.
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Alyona Getmanchuk:

Which counties, in your opinion, can be attracted by the Ukrainian soft power?

Joseph Nye:

Well, many people in the United States are attracted to Ukraine by history, others by culture. For people, who have no cultural ties, it is attractive because of the feeling that Ukraine is moving towards democracy and respecting human rights. When people in the United States compared Ukraine with, say, Belarus, the feeling was that Ukraine was projecting values that were attractive, while Belarus was projecting values that were not attractive. In this sense Ukraine has soft power in the United States as long as it lives up to democratic values. Regarding, what other countries it may attract, I think the most important task is to attract Russia, because you have a long shared history. Both of you had a time being under one government. The question there is what sort of actions by Ukraine can be attractive to Russia, not only to Russia, but to Russian people and Russian government. Because if we find a situation, when there is a difference between the government and the people, we may understand which attract one but don’t attract the other. So, soft power depends very much on what is in the mind of the perceiver.

Finally, Ukraine can attract countries in Western Europe, or West of Europe, if you want. And here again a great deal will come from the feeling that Ukraine is indeed more democratic and more respectful of human rights than any of its neighbors. These are some examples of how I think Ukraine may enhance its soft power with other countries.

Alyona Getmanchuk:
Thank you very much for your answer. Now I’d like to give the floor to our well-known political scholars and experts.
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Mikhailo Pohrebynskyi, Director, Center of Political and Conflict Studies:

Thank you very much for such an interesting speech and also for the works and studies you are doing. For me the most interesting thing I just heard was that the power in 21st century should be understood as the power of cooperation, rather than the power of dominance. Speaking about the soft power, I think its concept emerged as a supplement to hard power. To be exact, not supplement, but the other element that could replace hard power, when it is not effective. Regarding Ukraine, it seems to me that the idea of power of cooperation, proposed by Professor, and the understanding of soft power as power of effective cooperation, is really valuable. Especially it can be used in regard to our neighbors. We have mentioned Russia, but we should not forget Poland, Turkey and Caucasus. So our example of development, our attitude to people can attract our neighbors as well, which is also a soft power. That was my point. Thank you.

Joseph Nye:

Thank you, it was very interesting perspective. And I believe that it actually represents the potential for Ukraine to use its soft power. What is important, however, is the question whether the same message, same narrative works equally in all directions. For example, certain actions you take in terms of democracy may make you very attractive in Poland, and on the other hand, not very attractive to Kremlin, and certainly not in Belarus. So if your neighbors have different views, it makes it very difficult to have one narrative that attracts everybody.

As I mentioned before, for soft power it matters very much what is in the mind of person who is actually receiving, it’s not only broadcasting, it is also receiving. Something that may be attractive to one may be not attractive to another. I often use the example of the U.S. relations of the Iran. American culture, American policies are not attractive to the ruling party in Iran, but if we look at the younger generation of the Iranians, for them there is nothing they want more than a Hollywood film they could show in the privacy of their homes. So, American culture is repulsive for some religious conservatives, who rule the country, but it is attractive to some from the younger generation. So again, the soft power of attraction depends very much on who is being attracted. The same thing may attract one, but may repulse another. What I’m having in mind is that the certain actions and values of Ukraine that might be attractive in Poland, will not be attractive at least for the government of Belarus.
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Volodymyr Fesenko, Director, “PENTA”:

Professor Nye, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you. I have two questions. My first question is whether you think it’s time to start to use the new definition in the current international relations: “net power”. And second question is how you would assess the effectiveness of combining hard and soft power by Obama’s Administration. Let me explain. There is a widespread opinion in the Eastern Europe, in Ukraine in particular, that the current U.S. Administration does not pay much attention to the protection of democratic values in the region. Do you agree with that? How would you comment on such opinion?

Joseph Nye:

Let me answer your second question first and than the first one. I think every government has to realize that in the foreign policy you have multiple objectives and you are trying to achieve as much as you can. You are not only trying to have such objectives like stability, military security, economic security, but you also want to promote values, such as democracy and human rights. It would be easier to say that governments should only promote values, but then it would be not foreign, but human rights policy. If you are concerned about the military stability and nuclear weapons and you have to deal with the current Russian government, you have to reach the agreement with Russia about reducing the number of nuclear weapons. And if you refuse to talk to the Russians until they are better in the human rights or until they have a better record on democracy – that wouldn’t be the foreign policy at all. Foreign policy has to balance two things at the same time.

Or another example, which I mentioned before, with Obama trying to deal with Egypt in the last month or two. He had to deal with the government in Cairo to affect objectives like the peace process between Arabs and Israel. We needed to deal with the government in Cairo to balance power in the Persian Gulf region against Iran. But we also had to promote values, that is why Obama had talked to people in the Tahrir Square about having transition to democracy and why they use the military assistance to the Army to urge the Egyptian military not to shoot the demonstrators. Obama has to steer a line between sides of the conflict, it’s like walking down the tight-rope. If you look only at the hard power interests you fall off at the one side, but if you look only at the values and soft power you fell off other side. So I think, in general, Obama’s Administration walked down this tight-rope reasonably well, but sometimes it stumbled.

As for your first question of a net or Internet power, I think they are extremely important to pay attention to. I have the whole chapter in my new book titled cyber-power. What does it mean in a world, in which you interconnectiveness is so great, that you become vulnerable in ways which you were not in the past. So in the past someone could spy in your country and take away a briefcase full of secret documents. Now they can sit back in their own country and send an electronic mail across the border, and take away the whole rooms of documents, or electronic information property without crossing the border and you are not even always sure who did it. For example, sharing the data of centrifuge for the Iranian nuclear program is still causing many questions: no one is sure who has done this. Imagine that in January somebody were to shut down the power generations in Kyiv. It would be very bad for Kyiv, but you would not ever know where the attack came from. You can’t respond to the power attack, because you do not know who did it. It could be another government, it could be criminal gang, or terrorist gang, or even individual hacker. Cyber world leads to the diffusion of power, which is the one of the major challenges of the 21st century, that is why I have the whole chapter devoted to just cyber power.
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Ihor Zhdanov, Director, Analytical Center “Open Policy”:

Thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you. I have a little remark. You spoke about soft power and you were talking about foreign policy and relations between states. But is soft power effective in relation to domestic policy? Do you see any layout of soft power policy on the domestic policy of the state?

Joseph Nye:

Well, I think governments have hard power of coercion through police, and they have hard power in the sense of tax policy, which can take your money, they have also court system to reinforce this. So they have got hard power. But they also gain support and they need to attract people. This is extremely important on the democratic societies. A politician who wants to get elected must attract people and that means that soft power plays a very important role. And perhaps it is even more important, than in the international relations. The hard power in the domestic politics is more limited than in the international politics. So, generally I do agree with you.
I think it is interesting to call the example of the President Eisenhower, who was the American President and before that he was General. He once said: “To give a command is easy. But to get people to do what you want because they want to is hard”. This even reinforces your comment.
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Viktor Shlinchak, Head of the Supervisory Board of the Institute of World Policy

Professor Nye, considering the cyber security, I have a question which is also interesting to journalists, who are also here today. How you would assess the situation with Wikileaks, which we observed a few months ago within the context of soft and hard power?

Joseph Nye:

Cyber technologies, I mean computers, internet, is the instrument, which can be used as hard and soft power. When someone, for example, sends a warm or a virus, which shuts down your electrical system – it is using cyber as hard power. When someone uses Internet for appeals to democracy or human rights, this is using the Internet as soft power. So cyber can be used in either way.

As for the Wikileaks, for me it was interesting that it illustrates how individuals are empowered to do things that were previously difficult, because of that enormous changes in communication that the Internet provides. In the past someone could leak a document, it happens in democracies. But usually it was just a few documents. Now the private person was alleged to give 250 thousands State Department Cable to Wikileaks. That amount of information on the whole world was put in Internet and disseminated immediately. This is a big change. How much damage it has done to the United States? Well, I don’t think it has done so much damage as people feel. The one thing the truly secret intelligence was not really in these cables. Another thing is that the most embarrassing points that came out of these cables have made it impossible to go on such cable publicity. It is also worth noticing that many people reading these cables say: “Is it not interesting that American diplomats do talk about democracy and human rights when they are talking privately, so it is not only for public consumption”. So the effect of Wikileaks was that it enhanced American soft power, rather than undermine it.

Let me say one thing further. There are some people in the American Senate, which say: “Let’s prosecute this Julian Assange for doing this”. I disagree with that. I think if Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, had never been born, this question would have arisen anyway, because of the nature of technologies today. And we should regard Julian Assange essentially as a type of journalist. And if you say that we should prosecute him for having stolen property, then you have to prosecute the New York Times for having stolen property. That would be invasion on our democratic principles and freedom of press, which should not be done. I have published an op-ed in the Financial Times, saying: “Don’t prosecute Julian Assange, instead try to manage and monitor your data bases better”. Try to catch information when it has run out in Internet is a big mistake.
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Pavlo Zhovnirenko, Head of the Executive Board, Center for Strategic Studies

Thank you very much for such an interesting discussion. I’d like to say that for me it was once difficult to understand the definition of soft power. But after I had read the book by psychologist Karen Horney on the women’s psychology, and I managed to create my own association: male power is hard power, female power is soft power. What do you think of such an association line?

Joseph Nye:

Well, I think there is something in that. I read a book few years ago called “The powers to lead”, which was not about the power in the international relations, but about leadership within society. And it said that the effective leader has to have both hard and soft power, and ability to use them and combine them is smart power. I think in today’s world, where the power is more diffused, and where we don’t talk more about the hierarchy but about flattered structure of power, the soft power has become more important. In the industrial society of the 18-19th centuries, the orders in the factories came from the boss down to the manufacturing chain. In the informational society, which is based more on the networks; to have power does not mean to be the king, but to be the center of the circle, drawing people to that circle.

Now if you ask about female and male, in our society there is a tradition to see men as those who give orders, and women as those who are more attractive. In that sense we may assume that women are better in soft power than men. But I think it is mistake to think about this in terms of gender alone, because if it is correct in the international age you have to attract people in the circle to influence them, which can be true for men as well as for women. And if you say that only women do soft power and only men do hard power, it misses the fact that successful leader in the informational age, whether it is a female or male, has got to use both to have a smart strategy.
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Olexiy Semeniy, PhD, independent expert.

Professor Nye, I have one question and one comment. I would absolutely agree with you that if we talk about power, the combination of soft and hard power will be most effective, and we call that smart power. In your book and your recent article in Foreign Affairs Magazine you mentioned the smart power and you mentioned competition with China in this context. How would you assess the perspectives of China? You say that the situation is not as black as it is painted and the China is not going to be as powerful as the United States.

And what countries in the current international relations most effectively combine soft and hard power and use smart power? How do you assess China, Russia, Poland, Germany and Turkey from this standpoint?

And I would like to agree that smart power is the secret for any government to succeed in both foreign and domestic policies. Thank you.

Joseph Nye:

If we look at how different countries have applied smart power, I think we could say that Turkey has been quite successful. If we look at current Turkish policy, it is trying to attract all neighbors, which is associated with Prime Minister Erdogan. I think it has been quite successful in increasing its soft power. I also think that Russia, which you mentioned has not done much soft power.

You can look at the Russian approach to international relations: they have not made use of soft power which is traditional Russian culture. And if you look at the government, you’ll see that it can not use the civil society to affect others effectively. The Russian have not yet coped with the fact that old ways of the hard power need to be coupled with soft power.

If you apply this to China, it is interesting that China’s hard power is increasing dramatically with 10 per cent economic growth per year and 12 per cent of military investments each year. That increase in hard power can frighten China’s neighbors. In 2007 President Hu Tsintao told the 17th Party Congress of the Communist Chinese Party, we in China should invest more in our soft power. And that was the smart strategy. Because if China grows only in hard power, it will frighten its neighbors and they will start making coalitions against it to protect themselves. But if China also develops its soft power and seems less threatening to its neighbors, than they are less likely to create counter-weighing coalitions. So I will argue that Hu Tsintao’s strategy is a smart power strategy. The problem China has is that it is very difficult to implement this because of the nature of its political system. So China spends billions of dollars to promote its values and culture, to develop broadcasting in other languages, but it still has a political control that limits the soft power in the country. For example, a couple years ago I was in Beijing and gave a lecture in the Beijing University. A student asked me how China could increase its soft power, I said: “You could do it if you relax more”.

Take for example film industry. Why is it so that India, which is the same size as China, has a film industry, a Bollywood, that dominates the world? Is it because India has better directors or actors? No. It is because India has no censors. So if China wants to appeal to films, as India did, it should get rid of the censorship. But of course my advice was not very useful to the student, because the Chinese system is built in the censorship. Or give you another example. Last year China spent a lot of money on the Shanghais exposition, which I went to. And it was wonderful, the Chinese pavilion was very beautiful, showing traditional Chinese culture and you come away from it feeling attracted to China. But then China locked Liu Xiaobo and prevented him from going to get his Nobel Prize award and it undercut all soft power. The smart power strategy demands that you have to live up to these values of soft power, not only declare them. And I think China will have troubles in developing this side of soft power until it begins to liberalize its political system.
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Serhiy Dzherdzh, Ukraine-NATO Civic League:

My question is how the theory of soft power can be correlated with informational policy of the state and informational influence. Soft power is not so useful if we don’t develop the corresponding symbolic informational system, because the informational vacuum will be filled with information from the other countries. In this aspect we still have a misbalance of the system of symbols, because there is no synergy in the society and this weakens soft power. So what is the correlation between the power and informational system?

Zoriana Mishchuk, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung:

I’m representing the organization that is dealing with spreading the soft power of Germany. By the way, according to BBC ratings Germany is on the top of different ratings of perception among the countries. 60% of the world’s population sees Germany in a positive way, for Russia it is 30%. I have a question with regard to public diplomacy. The increase of soft power has caused the increased interest towards public diplomacy and promotion programs. So how effective public diplomacy is especially after 2001, when the U.S. focused on the Middle East? I’m talking about the perception of the USA in the Middle East. As we can see, media programs, internships for young leaders did not affect much the perception of the U.S. in this particular region.
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Joseph Nye:

Thank you very much for reminding me about Germany. The good job that Germany has done I should have mentioned before. But this job was not so much done by the government but by such institutions like Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and other parts of civil society. That relates to the prior question, the information. The information is essential for the soft power society, but we should not forget that it is generated mostly by civic society, not governments. State programs can do some good. But when people think they listen to propaganda, it loses credibility. Very often there is view that if you put more money in the public broadcasting that the government supports, that will increase a soft power, but it is not so right. I’m not against the public broadcasting, I’m in favor of it. But if people hear a public broadcast and they know that the government supports it, they tend to discount it a little bit. On the other hand, as the famous American journalist Eduard Moore once said, in human communications the most important part of a long process is the last one meter, when you are face to face with another human being and communication goes in both directions, that is the most credible way of communication. And in this context the civil society is the key to successful public diplomacy in the future. If I get the information on another country only through the governmental channel, I tend to discount it a little. But if I get the information through the interactions with other people, it is becoming more credible. That is the secret for successful public diplomacy. I have a section on public diplomacy in my new book, in which I argue that the most successful public policy is from society to society, not from government to government. That is why exchanges of students, young leaders are very important. American soft power in the Middle East does not depend on the government, because government’s policy there looks unattractive. American soft power comes more from Hollywood, Harvard and Melinda Gates Foundation. Sometimes when government’s policy becomes very unpopular it is worth to make sure that these things remain popular. And that is important. It is interesting to notice, that when people were protesting against the government in the time of Vietnam War they were not singing the “International”, they were singing Martin Luther King’s “We shall overcome”, so there was an aspect of American culture which remained attractive, though the government policy was extremely unattractive. That’s why the secret for effective public diplomacy in the future is to think that it depends more on the civil society than on governments.

Oleksandr Lytvynenko, Deputy Director, National Institute for Strategic Studies

Good afternoon. I have two short questions. We understand that soft power can be based on the present, past and future. What is the best for the attractiveness of the country to be based on? And the second question. We know that democratic countries are more attractive than dictatorships. But what about successful authoritarian regimes? Take, for example, the case of China. It is not a democracy, but it demonstrates impressive economic growth. What about such attractiveness?

Joseph Nye:

I think it is very important point that country can be attractive because of its effectiveness. China gets a big deal of its soft power from its economic performance. It has done something pretty marvelous, which is in over the last 30 years. It has risen hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. That is a very good thing, and how they managed to do this is also very attractive. So in that sense China’s economic performance not only produces hard power in the sense of wealth and military, it also produces soft power, in the sense that their successful performance produces soft power. You might say the same thing about the European Union that some of the EU’s soft power comes from the successful performance in the past. I think in that performance can make a big difference. But that is why I mentioned the paradox for China is that it gets soft power from the economic performance, but it cuts its soft power by the political performance. And so if you take such country like Venezuela or Zimbabwe, I don’t think it matters that China locks Liu Xiaobo. But for such countries like France or Mexico it matters very much, so you need both economic and political performance.

Alyona Getmanchuk:

Unfortunately, our videoconference is almost over. The very last question is what are the indicators of the really successful soft power? How can a country measure it?

Joseph Nye:

One of the ways of measuring soft power is public opinion polls, in which you can ask whether the country is seen as attractive or not. If we go back to polls we mentioned earlier, made be BBC to find out which country is attractive, you can see the dynamic of changes and how the policy can make the attractiveness of the country go up or go down. But in the end not everything goes from the enabling environment which comes from the attractiveness the polls show. It also comes from the ability to get what you want because of that enabling environment. Or you can create an opposite, which is the disabling environment. For example, when the President George W. Bush wanted to get a support from the Turkey in Iraq War, the U.S. had become so unattractive in Turkey, that the Turkish government refused to allow the American troops to cross Turkey. That is the example how the lack of the soft power undercut hard power. You can look at polls as an approximated association, but you can also look at the political decisions, as to see how it affects eventual political outcomes.

Alyona Getmanchuk:

Professor, thank you very much. I believe the Kyiv audience was very pleased talking to you. We will be happy to see you again at our video-bridges, but also in Kyiv. We invite you to Kyiv to discuss your current book and other issues, so you are always welcome in Ukraine’s capital. And I’d like to thank U.S. Embassy in Kyiv for facilitation of the organizational process. Also my gratefulness goes to UNITER/PACT for their support of our common project called “Ukraine’s Soft Power”. So thank you very much for being with us today.

Joseph Nye:

Thank you very much for your comments and questions, I hope to visit Kyiv someday. Thank you for your invitation.

Photo by Stanislav Gruzdev