[Note:A version of this article was originally published in the English edition of Global Times on 4-18-2011]

Recently Joseph S. Nye, Jr spoke about his new book, “The Future of Power” at the Japan Society in New York City.

During his talk, Nye defined soft power as the ability to attract or persuade others to give you what you want without having to use coercion.

For Nye, it is not the facts that matter in “the information age”. Instead soft power, which includes how the narrative describing a situation is framed, is as important as, or even more important than military action, in gaining one’s objectives. As he says in an online article, “In a global information age, success is not determined just by who has the biggest army, but also by who has the best story.”

In the question period at the end of his talk, Nye was asked… weiter lesen

‘You are the sixteenth member of the Security Council.”
China’s UN Ambassador Li BaoDong speaking to the international media

In March, China took over the rotating presidency of the Security Council for the month. As is the practice at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on March 2, the 2nd day of his presidency, Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, held a press conference for journalists at the UN.(1) At the beginning of the press conference, he welcomed the media, saying that the media is the “sixteenth member of the Security Council.” (There are 15 member nations on the UN Security Council.)

Thinking of the international media in such a way recognizes its influence on the actions of the UN Security Council. This presents an interesting phenomenon which it is important to understand. The international media does indeed play a role in how the Security Council… weiter lesen