I have spent the holidays writing a book on smart power and America's future. Looking back a decade, it is difficult to recapture the optimism at the century's beginning. We had a booming economy, a fiscal surplus and were at peace. Now we have the great recession, huge deficits and...

The end of the Cold War was a greater historical transformation than 9/11, but controversy persists about its causes. An article by Steven Erlanger in Monday's New York Times quotes the neo-conservative commentator Robert Kagan as saying that "the standard narrative is Reagan." But the standard narrative is misleading.

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On Sunday, Ariana Huffington and I shared a platform about transformative presidencies at a Truman Library forum in Kansas City. She drew an interesting contrast between the audacity of Obama's campaign and the caution of his domestic policy. Certainly, Obama's conciliatory approach has been notable. He has not followed...

When I was a young assistant professor at Harvard during the Vietnam War, the name Robert McNamara had purely negative connotations. Influenced by David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, and by the disaster of the war, I could not imagine that I would like him some day. But I...

Earlier today, I published an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled "Scholar on the Sidelines." In it I noted that aside from economists and scientists, very few academics have been appointed to policy positions in the Obama administration. The 2008 TRIP poll of 2,700 international relations scholars shows that...

In his farewell address yesterday, George W. Bush pointed out that America has gone seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. That is an important fact, but future historians will have to judge the extent to which Bush caused it, and whether it could have been achieved by...

President Obama faces a dilemma in foreign policy. On the one hand, he will inherit a legacy he cannot ignore: an economic crisis, two wars, a struggle against terrorism, and a set of problems in the Middle East among others. If he fails to fight these fires successfully, they will...

I gave a speech in London yesterday, and was overwhelmed and delighted by the enthusiasm for the United States as a result of the Obama election. The papers not only devoted their front pages to the election, but multiple pages inside. Many people remarked on "the extra-ordinary capacity of the...

For any independents wavering on the eve of the election, I thought I would explain why I will vote for Barack Obama. I did not start there. I supported Hillary Clinton because I knew and admired her, and because I was concerned about Obama's lack of experience at the national...

Is the current financial crisis an indicator of the long term decline of American power? When I wrote Bound to Lead in 1989, the conventional wisdom was that the United States (and its economy) were in decline. I did not believe it then, and do not believe it now. I...

As the flags are lowered over the 2008 Olympic games, China is basking in the achievement of a major objective -- an increase of its soft power. Not only in terms of gold medals won by Chinese athletes, but by the successful staging of the games, China hopes to have...

Several people responded to my earlier blog about Obama by asking what I meant by soft power. There is an entire chapter (and references) in my book The Powers to Lead for those who want to pursue it further, but put simply, soft power is the ability to obtain...

I have spent the past month lecturing in Oxford and traveling in Europe where Barack Obama could be elected in a landslide. I suspect that this fascination with Obama is true in many parts of the world. In fact, as I have said before, it is difficult to think of...

Barack Obama has "charisma", the special power of a person to inspire fascination and loyalty. But with the eruption of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's recent remarks and a worsening economy, a new situation is testing Obama's charismatic appeal, and this raises an important question. Does charisma originate in the individual,...

I wrote a piece on Bush in Sunday's Los Angeles Times which compared him to Woodrow Wilson. A number of people have questioned the comparison, so I thought it useful to open a broader conversation. (A more detailed discussion is in my new book, The Powers to Lead.)

Wilson...

As we choose our next president, Americans not only want someone to ably handle a crisis after a hypothetical 3 a.m. phone call. We also want someone who reinforces our identity and tells us who we are. As I argue in The Powers to Lead, we judge leaders not only...

Hillary Clinton's tough comeback campaign refocuses attention on the important issue of women and leadership. Does gender really matter?
Management experts argue that leadership is increasingly a "woman's world." Research shows the increased success of what was once considered a "feminine style". In terms of gender stereotypes, a...

The crisis on September 11, 2001 produced an opportunity for George W. Bush to express a bold new vision of foreign policy. But a successful vision is one that combines inspiration with feasibility. And Bush did not get that combination right. Among past presidents who have been able to combine...

The United States needs to rediscover how to be a "smart power." That was the conclusion of a bipartisan commission that I recently co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration. A group of Republican and Democratic members of Congress, former ambassadors, retired military...

Basically, Hillary Clinton was right. We need to combine hard military power with the soft power of our attraction (that she refers to at the end of her speech) into a smart power strategy. We failed to do that in Iraq. We lacked adequate forces to suppress the looting...