In a world of shifting global power, how important are soft, hard and Essay

In a world of shifting global power, how important are soft, hard and smart power - Essay Example that if one compares the rate of global change within the current system to the rate in which global and systemic change occurred several decades past, the two would be hardly recognizable. Such a realization brings one logically to ask the question of whether or not this means that the same mechanisms that political scientists have employed to explain, understand, categorize, and classify such a system are still of use and/or importance within the current time. As a means to understand such a question, this particular analysis will consider the three forms of power that have formed the basis of the political scientists explanation of the global system for many decades now: soft power, hard power, and smart power. As such, the analysis will define, analyze and seek to draw inference as to the ultimate question of how pertinent each of these play in helping to define a world that is so drastically and dynamically different than the world in which these terms and their definitions were forged. The analysis will start with an examination of hard power as the form of power that seeks to careers a given group, nation, system, or entity into acting in a way that they otherwise would not. Joseph Nye describes this â€Å"hard power† as â€Å"the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and military might to make others follow your will† (Nye 2011, p. 15). In this way, the concept of â€Å"hard power† has often been discussed and enumerated upon as the oldest form of power in existence within the current world system. There is no shortage of examples of how such power has worked in the past nor how it continues to work within the current times. One does not need to look hard in order to see the way that hard power is exhibited within the current global system. For instance, when one considers the way in which key nations within the past decade have utilized hard power to influence the way in which other nations behave, it becomes clearly obvious tha t the