In
the 1780s a significant shift occurred in the way man thought about thinking. Immanuel
Kant suggested that man alone possessed rational thought.[1] Thoughts
were distillations of man’s own imaginations and therefore afforded man the self-determined
power of reason. This led to a revolutionary change regarding who determined
morality which further suggested political power could be determined not only on
materially inherited strength (realism theory) but on the strength of man-made ideas
(liberalism). In the 1990s a similar shift occurred. The notion of power had
been fixed on tangible, outward measures of coercion, i.e. military might and the
purchasing power of a state’s economy. Joseph Nye suggested instead that an alternative
form of power existed in the form of attraction or soft power. His re-defining power led to entirely new
ways of conceptualizing international political relations because it recognized
the relevance of realism foundations of tangible strength, such as hard power, as
well as liberalism foundations of ideas. Foreign policy practitioners today
attempt to synthesize his two domains of hard and soft power in pragmatic
“smart power” strategies.
