Joseph S Nye

Joseph S Nye

JOSEPH S NYE, JR, A PROFESSOR AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND A FORMER US ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENCE, IS THE AUTHOR, MOST RECENTLY, OF 'DO MORALS MATTER? PRESIDENTS AND FOREIGN POLICY FROM FDR TO TRUMP'

US President Donald Trump speaks before signing the "Take It Down Act" during a bill signing ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 19, 2025. The bipartisan legislation will criminalize the non-consenual publication of  sexual imagery, including AI-generated deepfakes and "revenge porn." (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

The future of American soft power

The writer, a giant of international relations who died recently, transformed our understanding of power. This piece, his final commentary, caps off...

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi estimates that Iran could make a bomb in a matter of months, not years.

Will we see more nuclear proliferation?

Recent geopolitical developments could lead more countries to pursue the bomb

 The US' share of the world economy has remained at around 25 per cent. As long as the US maintained strong alliances with Japan and Europe, they would represent more than half the world economy, compared to a mere 20 per cent for China and Russia.
THE BROAD VIEW

How world order changes

The role of evolving power dynamics and norms in bringing about stable arrangements among states

The 21st century brought another shift in the distribution of power, usually described as the rise (or more accurately, the recovery) of Asia.
PERSPECTIVE

The future of world order

Are we entering a totally new period of US decline, or are the second Trump administration’s attacks on the institutions and alliances...

So, what is globalisation's future? Long-distance interdependencies will remain a fact of life as long as humans are mobile and equipped with communication and transportation technologies.
PERSPECTIVE

Does globalisation have a future?

With an anti-globalist America at the fore, we may end up with only harmful long-distance dependencies, rather than beneficial ones

Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a plenary session in the outreach/BRICS Plus format at the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 24, 2024. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov / POOL / AFP)

Why Brics will not become the new fulcrum of world politics

The group of major emerging economies is neither representative enough nor sufficiently united to lead others

With Trump already announcing plans to slap tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China, we should certainly expect some new levies to be imposed.
THE BROAD VIEW

Anticipating Trump’s foreign policy

Even if predictions based on campaign statements and Cabinet appointments leave us uncertain, Donald Trump’s worldview can still be located in a...

Protests at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas' Oct 7 attack. University presidents and governing boards have struggled to find the right response.

Political protest and the university

The 1960s have a lot to teach university leaders about today’s campus protests

Youths climb on destroyed Russian military machinery, displayed near St Mykhailivsky Cathedral in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct 8 2024, amid the Russian invasion.

What would victory in Ukraine look like?

Though both Russia and Ukraine have expressed a willingness to negotiate, they remain far apart

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. August 20, 2024 and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., August 15, 2024 are seen in a combination of file photographs. REUTERS/Marco Bello, Jeenah Moon/File Photo
COMMENTARY

US foreign policy in 2025

There will be large areas of continuity in US foreign policy no matter who wins the November presidential election. But the differences...