Joseph S. Nye Jr., an influential figure in shaping American national security policy, who wrote seminal books on foreign affairs, held top jobs at Harvard and in government, and coined the term “soft power” — the idea that America’s global influence was more than its military might — died on Tuesday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 88.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Daniel.
Sometimes considered the dean of American political science, Mr. Nye led the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and held senior jobs in the Carter and Clinton administrations.
His thinking radiated far outside the Ivory Tower: He influenced diplomats and national security officials, and, as a soft-spoken, fatherly figure, he was a mentor to many who made careers in government.
“Joe Nye was a giant: a giant because his ideas shaped the worldviews of multiple generations of policymakers — but even more so a giant because his personal touch shaped our life choices,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said in a text message.
Mr. Nye developed the concept of soft power in the late 1980s to explain how America’s ability to get other nations to do what it wanted rested on more than the power of its military or economy; it also derived from American values.
“Seduction is always more effective than coercion,” he explained in a 2005 interview. “And many of our values, such as democracy, human rights and individual opportunity, are deeply seductive.”
Soft power tools include diplomacy, economic assistance and trustworthy information, such as that provided in Voice of America broadcasts. He laid out his thinking in a 2004 book, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.”
Mr. Nye’s insight gained wide currency with political leaders across ideological and national borders. It was cited favorably by the conservative Republican Newt Gingrich and the president of China, in 2007. Mr. Nye was invited to dinner in Beijing, where the foreign minister asked him how China could increase its soft power. Australia revised its diplomacy to incorporate soft power, telling the story of Australian culture to the world.
“Joe’s seminal book on soft power is one of the very few books by a political scientist on international relations that had an impact on the real world beyond academia,” Derek Shearer, a professor of diplomacy at Occidental College in Los Angeles, said in an email.
In 2009, during her confirmation hearings as the nominee for secretary of state, Hillary Clinton used the term “smart power” 13 times — another concept Mr. Nye developed, meaning a combination of the tools of hard and soft power — in explaining how she would combat Islamic terrorism in the world.
Mr. Nye’s influence could be gauged by the tributes to him that were posted on social media immediately after his death. Antony Blinken, secretary of state in the Biden administration, described him as “a friend and mentor to so many including me.” Admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, said, “Joe Nye was incredibly kind to me throughout my life.”
Mr. Nye first worked in government in the Carter administration as a deputy under secretary of state from 1977 to 1979. He returned to Washington under President Bill Clinton in 1993 to chair the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the president.
In 1994, he was appointed assistant secretary for international security affairs at the Pentagon, where he and colleagues developed a new Asia policy at a low point of U.S.-Japan relations.
What became known as the “Nye initiative” affirmed America’s military commitment to Asia and the U.S.-Japan alliance as a bulwark against China and North Korea.
Mr. Nye was also known as an intellectual father of neoliberalism in foreign policy. A 1977 book that he wrote with Robert Keohane, “Power and Interdependence,” emphasized that military power was a declining force and that nations could ensure a peaceful world through global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The book was assigned to graduate students of government for four decades.
Mr. Nye, who joined the Harvard faculty in 1964, was dean of the Kennedy School of Government from 1995 to 2004. He pushed for more women and Republican voices in its ranks.
“He helped build this institution into what it is today, while transforming the field of international relations,” Jeremy Weinstein, the current Kennedy School dean, wrote to colleagues in an email this week.
In his ideas and his professional roles, Mr. Nye was a charter member of America’s foreign policy establishment, a term sometimes used pejoratively to mean a bipartisan consensus by Republicans and Democrats about the importance of globalization in economic and world affairs. He was a leader of international nongovernmental organizations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Aspen Strategy Group and the Atlantic Council.
President Trump, since he first rode a populist wave to power in 2016, has denounced mainstream national security professionals, dismissing them as a Washington elite desperate to hold on to power. Mr. Nye saw an America in decline under Mr. Trump.
Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. was born on Jan. 19, 1937, in South Orange, N.J. His father was a bond trader on Wall Street, and his mother, Else (Ashwell) Nye, had been a secretary when she met her future husband. A Puritan ancestor, Benjamin Nye, arrived in Massachusetts in 1639.
Joe, as Mr. Nye was called, graduated from Morristown Prep, now the Morristown Beard School, in Morristown, N.J., and from Princeton University, where he earned a B.A. in 1958. He won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, where he did graduate work. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard with a dissertation about East Africa emerging from colonialism.
In 1961, he married Mary Harding, known as Molly, whom he had met when they were teenagers. She ran an art gallery in Lexington, Mass., and then became a docent at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington when the couple lived in the capital. Their principal residence was a home on Lexington Battle Green, in Lexington, Mass. They also owned a 900-acre farm in North Sandwich, N.H., where Mr. Nye grew vegetables, hunted deer and made maple syrup.
Ms. Nye died in December 2024.
Besides his son Daniel, Mr. Nye is survived by two other sons, John and Benjamin, and nine grandchildren.
Mr. Nye conceived of soft power while working at his kitchen table on a response to a best-selling 1988 book by the British historian Paul Kennedy, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” which argued that the United States was in long-term decline.
Mr. Nye did not accept that bleak conclusion.
He laid out his response in a 1990 book, “Bound to Lead,” and later more fully in “Soft Power,” which argued that America exerts a seductive appeal to the world not just because of Coca-Cola or Hollywood movies, but also because it stands for democracy, the rule of law and, at its best, humanitarianism.
This year, Mr. Nye watched in deep dismay as President Trump, less restrained than in his first term, gutted basic instruments of U.S. soft power, including food and medical aid to foreign countries and the Voice of America.
“I’m afraid President Trump doesn’t understand soft power,” Mr. Nye told CNN in an interview days before his death. “Think back on the Cold War — American nuclear deterrence and American troops in Europe were crucial. But when the Berlin Wall went down, it didn’t go down under a barrage of artillery. It went down under hammers and bulldozers wielded by people whose minds had been changed by the Voice of America and the BBC.”
Trip Gabriel is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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