Nye: Toward a Liberal Realist Foreign Policy

Nye, J., 2008. Toward a Liberal Realist Foreign Policy: The next president can advance American interests by putting global challenges in strategic context-and refocusing the United States as a "smart power''. Harvard Magazine, 110(4), 36.

“The old distinction between realists and liberals needs to give way to a new synthesis that you might choose to call ‘liberal realism’. What should a liberal realist foreign policy comprise? First, it would start w2ith an understanding of the strength and limits of American power. WE are the only superpower, but preponderance is not empire or hegemony” ( 36).

The world is currently divided into three chess-boards. The top layer involves the military, and that is clearly unipolar and dominated by the US. The middle board is economic, and that is currently multipolar with no clear dominant force. The lower board represents transnational forces, such as climate change, intellectual property rights, etc. That board is chaotic.

“Second, a liberal realist policy would stress the importance of developing an integrated grand strategy that combines hard military power with soft ‘attractive power’ to create smart power of the sort that won the Cold War. In a war on terrorism, we need to use hard power against the hard-core terrorists, but we cannot hope to win unless we gain the hearts and minds of the moderates” (38).

“Third, the objective of a liberal realist policy should be to advance the principle of ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’ that has long constituted American political culture. Such a grand strategy would have four key pillars: providing security for the United states and its allies; maintaining a strong domestic and international economy; avoiding environmental disasters; and encouraging liberal democracy and hu8man rights at home and abroad where feasible at reasonable levels of cost…This does not mean imposing American values by force” (38).

Nye then identifies five areas that present pressing challenges to the US: terrorism/nukes, political islam, the rise of an Asian hegemon, an economic depression and an ecological disaster.