If I Were to Rewrite Soft Power by Joseph Nye
When Joseph Nye first coined the term Soft Power, he offered the world a new lens through which nations could understand influence, not by coercion or wealth, but through attraction.
His framework was groundbreaking in its time. Yet, two decades later, the world has changed faster than Nye’s definitions have evolved.
If I were to rewrite Joseph Nye’s Soft Power today, I would expand its vocabulary, its audience, and its stage.
1. Beyond Diplomats & Politicians
Nye’s Soft Power was written for a world of suits and statecraft, a conversation among statesmen, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and political science think tanks. Its tone, scope, and examples all orbit around the machinery of foreign policy and public diplomacy.
Soft power, in Nye’s telling, was the art of persuasion between governments: the ability to make others want what you want without coercion or payment.
However, in the 21st century, influence no longer flows solely through embassies. It flows through expression, film, and fashion, as well as tourism, technology, investment climates, and immigration policies, influencing how we educate and who we welcome.
Soft power is no longer limited to summit halls but also extends to streaming platforms, airports, and classrooms. It is shaped as much by an influencer’s post as by an ambassador’s speech, as much by a nation’s student visa policy as by its foreign minister’s statement.
Nations now compete on the world stage in two parallel arenas: one visible in the United Nations, where words are weighed, and another, far more subtle, in the global imagination, where emotions are formed.
A traveler’s choice of destination, a student’s choice of university, a creator’s choice of collaboration, these have become modern referendums of admiration. The question is no longer who has the stronger army, but who tells a better story, who people choose to visit, study with, work for, or what to watch on Netflix.
2. Beyond the American Lens
Walk into a Waterstones bookstore in London and you’ll find Joseph Nye’s Soft Power shelved NOT under “Political Science” or “Global Affairs,” but under “U.S. History.” And that, in many ways, says it all.
Nye’s framework, though intellectually universal in principle, is narrated through a distinctly American vantage point. It reflects the worldview of a nation at its zenith, confident in its values, dominant in its media, and convinced that others naturally aspire to its model. The book’s examples, tone, and logic all assume America as the subject and the world as its audience.
But the world has changed its channel. The monopoly of American cultural gravity has fractured into a mosaic of new centers of attraction: Seoul, Tokyo, Riyadh, Barcelona, Mumbai, Lagos, São Paulo. Each of these cities has an equally important perspective that, when studied, can help one better capture the universality of soft power’s frameworks.
Soft power is no longer a Western monopoly; it has become a global language with regional dialects, each shaped by its own history, aesthetic, and moral rhythm. If I were to rewrite Soft Power, I would decenter the narrative, not to diminish American contribution, but to rebalance the conversation.
3. From Unilateralism to Multipolar Reality
Nye wrote Soft Power during a singular window in modern history, the unipolar years of the 1990s and early 2000s, when American dominance seemed both absolute and permanent. The Soviet Union had collapsed, globalization was dressed in denim and Hollywood, and the internet was still largely an English-speaking frontier.
His analysis, while insightful, was deeply rooted in that moment. It unfolded under the long shadow of 9/11, the Iraq invasion, and the age of the “War on Terror”, an era when soft power was often invoked to repair the damage left by hard power. It was a time when the United States forced a “worldview” narration.
But the 21st century is not the 20th century with better Wi-Fi. The world today is not unipolar; it is multipolar, messy, and morally fragmented. Power no longer flows from a single capital but from competing centers of influence, each armed with its own truth.
4. From Broadcast Media to Algorithmic Influence
In Nye’s world, soft power flowed through broadcast empires, including Hollywood, CNN, the Voice of America, the BBC, and The New York Times. Influence was produced in studios, edited by gatekeepers, and distributed through satellite and print media. Cultural attraction moved in one direction. But that world has dissolved into pixels.
Today, soft power no longer travels through scheduled programming; it travels through scrolls. It flows across YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, and Spotify through the unplanned choreography of algorithms and the unpredictable chemistry of virality.
Where nations once courted journalists, they now court creators. Where influence once required a press briefing, it now requires a moment that can be clipped, remixed, and shared. The new diplomats are influencers, the latest broadcasts are streams, and the new propaganda is often indistinguishable from entertainment.
Soft power today is less about persuasion and more about participation, about how people willingly become carriers of the story.
Every share, like, and duet becomes a micro-act of diplomacy, amplifying narratives governments can neither script nor fully control.
And soon, the current will deepen further.
Soft power will flow through AI, via recommendation systems that determine which cultures we encounter, which histories we remember, and which faces we see on our screens. Algorithms are the new editors of perception. They do not simply deliver content; they curate consciousness.
As AI begins to generate art, voice, and identity, influence itself will become synthetic, designed, adaptive, and invisible.
These reflections build on the ideas explored in my book, Let Me Explain California Rolls (And Why Culture Surplus is the Future of Soft Power), where culture, not policy, becomes the accurate measure of power.
