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The Information Revolution and Power “Governments will remain the most powerful actors on the global stage. How- ever, the stage will become more crowded, and many non-state actors will com- pete effectively for influence.” The Information Revolution and Power JOSEPH S. NYE JR. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/113/759/19/390036/curh_113_759_019.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 ne of the notable trends of the past cen- the global population is online; by 2020 that share tury that will likely continue to strongly is projected to grow to 60 percent, or five billion Oinfluence global politics in this century is people, many connected with multiple devices. the current information revolution. And with this The key characteristic of this information revo- information revolution comes an increase in the lution is not the speed of communications among role of soft power—the ability to obtain preferred the wealthy and the powerful; for a century and a outcomes by attraction and persuasion rather than half, instantaneous communication by telegraph coercion and payment. has been possible between Europe and North Soft Power Information revolutions America. The crucial change, rather, is the radical Revisited are not new—one can think and ongoing reduction in the cost of transmit- Fourth in a series back to the dramatic effects ting information. If the price of an automobile of Gutenberg’s printing press had declined as rapidly as the price of computing in the sixteenth century. But today’s information power, one could buy a car today for $10 to $15. revolution is changing the nature of power and When the price of a technology shrinks so rap- increasing its diffusion. Sometimes called “the idly, it becomes readily accessible and the barriers third industrial revolution,” the current transfor- to entry are reduced. For all practical purposes, mation is based on rapid technological advances transmission costs have become negligible; hence in computers and communications that in turn the amount of information that can be transmitted have led to extraordinary declines in the costs of worldwide is effectively infinite. creating, processing, transmitting, and searching for information. WINNING STORIES One could date the ongoing information revolu- In the middle of the twentieth century, people tion from Intel cofounder Gordon Moore’s obser- feared that the computers and communications of vation in the 1960s that the number of transistors the information revolution would create the cen- fitting on an integrated circuit doubles approxi- tral governmental control dramatized in George mately every two years. As a result of Moore’s Law, Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Instead, as com- computing power has grown enormously, and by puting power has decreased in cost and comput- the beginning of the twenty-first century doubling ers have shrunk to the size of smartphones and this power cost one-thousandth of what it did in other portable devices, their decentralizing effects the early 1970s. have outweighed their centralizing effects, as Meanwhile, computer-networked communica- WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have demon- tions have spread worldwide. In 1993, there were strated. about 50 websites in the world; by 2000, the num- Power over information is much more wide- ber had surpassed 5 million, and a decade later ly distributed today than even a few decades had exceeded 500 million. Today, about a third of ago. Information can often provide a key power resource, and more people have access to more JOSEPH S. NYE JR., a Current History contributing editor, information than ever before. This has led to a is a professor of political science at Harvard University and diffusion of power away from governments to the author most recently of Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton University Press, non-state actors, ranging from large corporations 2013). to nonprofits to informal ad hoc groups. 19 20 • CURRENT HISTORY • January 2014 This does not mean the end of the nation-state. desires in world politics because other countries Governments will remain the most powerful want to follow it—admiring its values, emulating actors on the global stage. However, the stage will its example, and aspiring to its level of prosperity become more crowded, and many non-state actors and openness. will compete effectively for influence. They will In this sense, it is important to set the agenda do so mostly in the realm of soft power. and attract others in world politics, and not only to The increasingly important cyber domain pro- force them to change through the threat or use of vides a good example. A powerful navy is impor- military or economic weapons. This soft power— tant in controlling sea-lanes; it does not provide getting others to want the outcomes that you much help on the internet. The historian A.J.P. want—co-opts countries rather than coerces them. Taylor wrote that in nineteenth-century Europe, Soft power rests on the ability to shape the the mark of a great power was the ability to prevail preferences of others. It is not the possession of Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article-pdf/113/759/19/390036/curh_113_759_019.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 in war. Yet, as the American defense analyst John any one country, nor only of countries. For exam- Arquilla has noted, in today’s global information ple, companies invest heavily in their brands, age, victory may sometimes depend not on whose and nongovernmental activists often attack their army wins, but on whose story wins. brands to press them to change their practices. In international politics, a nation’s soft power rests SOURCES OF POWER primarily on three resources: its culture (in places I first coined the term “soft power” in my 1990 where it is attractive to others), its political values book Bound to Lead, which challenged the then- (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), conventional view of the decline of US power. and its foreign policies (when they are seen as After looking at American military and economic legitimate and having moral authority). power resources, I felt that something was still missing—the ability to affect PROPAGANDA PLOYS others by attraction and persua- China is doing well in terms sion rather than just coercion More people have access of culture, but is having diffi- and payment. I thought of soft culty with values and policies. power as an analytic concept to more information The world’s most populous to fill a deficiency in the way than ever before. country has always had an analysts thought about power. attractive traditional culture; The term was eventually now it has created hundreds of used by European leaders to describe some of Confucius Institutes around the world to teach its their power resources, as well as by other govern- language and culture. Beijing is also increasing its ments, such as Japan and Australia. But I was sur- international radio and television broadcasting. prised when President Hu Jintao told the Chinese Moreover, China’s economic success has attracted Communist Party’s 17th Party Congress in 2007 others. This attraction was reinforced by China’s that his country needed to increase its soft power. successful response to the 2008 global financial This is a smart strategy, because as China’s crisis—maintaining growth while much of the hard military and economic power grows, it may West fell into recession—and by its economic frighten its neighbors into balancing coalitions. aid and investment in poor countries. In the past If China can accompany its rise with an increase decade, it became common to refer to these efforts in its soft power, it can weaken the incentives as “China’s charm offensive.” for these coalitions. Consequently, the Chinese Yet, as the University of Denver’s Jing Sun government has invested billions of dollars in this observed in the September 2013 issue of Current task, and Chinese journals and papers are filled History, China has not reaped a good return on with hundreds of articles about soft power. But its investment. This is not because soft power is what, precisely, is it? becoming less important in world politics. It is a Power is the ability to affect others to obtain result of limitations in China’s strategy—a strategy the outcomes you want. You can affect their that overly stresses culture while neglecting civil behavior in three main ways: threats of coercion society and the damage done by nationalistic poli- (“sticks”), inducements or payments (“carrots”), cies. and attraction that makes others want what you In 2009, Beijing announced plans to spend huge want. A country may obtain the outcomes it sums to develop global media giants to compete The Information Revolution and Power • 21 with Bloomberg, Time Warner, and Viacom, using BBC, there is not much of an international audience soft power rather than military might to win friends for brittle propaganda. As The Economist reported, abroad. As George Washington University’s David “the party has not bought into Mr. Nye’s view that Shambaugh has documented, China has invested soft power springs largely from individuals, the pri- billions in external publicity work, including a vate sector, and civil society. So the government has 24-hour Xinhua cable news channel. taken to promoting ancient cultural icons whom it China’s soft power, however, still has a long thinks might have global appeal.” way to go. A recent BBC poll shows that opin- Given a political system that relies on one-party ions of China’s influence are positive in much control, it is difficult to tolerate dissent and diver- of Africa and Latin America, but predominantly sity. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party has negative in the United States and everywhere based its legitimacy on high rates of economic in Europe, as well as in India, Japan, and South growth and appeals to nationalism.
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