Harvard professor Joseph Nye popularized the term “smart power” to describe the capacity to gain support through attraction rather than force. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton employed the term during her Senate confirmation hearings, citing diplomacy as one of a full range of tools that far outshone the use of hard power in international relations.

In a quest to examine “U.S. Global Policy: Challenges to Building a 21st Century Grand Strategy” on March 4, 2010, fifty Next Generation Fellows gathered at the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C. to discuss smart power as it is related to U.S. grand strategy.

A panel on “Grand Strategy in an Age of Smart Power” was moderated by the project director, Francis J. Gavin, Director, Robert R. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Vikram J. Singh, Senior Defense Advisor to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Daniella Foster, Director of Public-Private Partnerships, Department of State; and Colin H. Kahl, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East participated in the panel. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy Planning, Department of State, addressed the fellows at a luncheon plenary session.

The Assembly was co-sponsored by The American Assembly, The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and the Meridian International Center (MIC), and it was the second meeting in the second phase of The Next Generation Project. 

The white papers from this meeting can be accessed here.