Nye Toys with a New 'Game:' Fiction

The Power Game, a new novel by former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government Joseph Nye curiously inverts the old adage about truth being stranger than fiction: this time the fiction has become true.

The book involves Peter Cutler, an academic turned powerful adviser within the State Department. Once there, he gets caught up in a maelstrom of alluring power politics, coming to a head when the CIA discovers that Pakistan has given Iran nuclear technology.

Peter and his colleagues find themselves in a moral dilemma over the use of force to deal with this threat. A military strike would lead to the death of an old friend, now a scientist in Pakistan’s nuclear program. Peter is left dirtied and disillusioned by the web of intrigue with which he has become involved, ending with all the aspects of his life being drawn into it.

“It’s about the struggle for power and what it does to friendships,” Nye says of the book’s crux. “It shows what it’s like in Washington and the difficulty of keeping a moral compass.”

The book, begun a decade ago but not published until this past October, started out as sounding far-fetched. But as time went on and details emerged that Pakistan in fact had given aid to Iran’s nuclear program, “I noticed from the headlines that it’s not so far-fetched at all,” Nye says. “For a while I was worried that fact might overcome the fiction.”

Like his protagonist—a career academic who got involved in national politics—Nye brings a new and luminous perspective to this type of fiction. By turning from his academic writings (exemplified by his similarly themed, but much differently constructed Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics) to a novel he has tried to take a different angle on Washington dealings.

Nye says the form allowed for a different mode of exploration of politics. “I felt I could capture another dimension of power through fiction,” he says. “Academic writing tends to generalize, while fiction tries to particularize. It tries to use one image to illuminate the larger truth.”

The move to fiction, though drastic, seemed natural to Nye. “It’s always fun to tell a story, and it also allowed me to use the other side of the brain,” he says. “Sometimes I would work on an academic book during the day and turn to fiction in the evening for relaxation.”

That’s not to say that writing the novel was easy. To pick up the nuances of the form, he went to writing workshops and writers’ groups. “I spent a fair amount of time leaning this different type of writing,” he says.

Perhaps Nye was aided by his intimate familiarity with the book’s material. While he stops short of declaring that the protagonist is directly based on himself, he did say that Peter Cutler grew out of experience he had at the State and Defense Departments and in the intelligence community.

Nye had previously stated that the idea came from a memo he had written for the Secretary of State concerning the ethics of a preemptive strike against a nascent nuclear program. The moral problem continued to fascinate him until it found an expression in fiction.

“Fiction is an extrapolation of dreams and nightmares,” Nye says. “Some are exaggerated from my own experience, others happened to other people. The nice thing about it is it allows you to explore these dreams more fully.”

Nye’s main goal in writing the book was to “illustrate the tension between power and morality as it relates to issues today.” On the national level, he raises the question of the legitimacy of the use of force, while on the personal level, he stresses the need for a moral balance in policymakers.

Nye’s message is more applicable now than ever. He says the book was an effort to make people understand his philosophy of “soft power.” He has described the term as “a country’s cultural or ideological appeal as a source of power and influence.” It provides, he argues, a healthier alternative to “hard power,” which consists of military intervention.

The reader of Nye’s novel is forced to “think about the issue of using force in terms of moral issues.” He adds, “I wish people had read it before the invasion of Iraq.”

Nye says he hopes the book is read by people interested in foreign policy, but at a different angle than that to which they are accustomed. “When you read something in academic prose it’s like the script of a film,” he says. “Fiction increases the impact of the words. Some words that would be cool and passionless appear different when set on the edge of a cliff or in the middle of a storm. It allows you to generate tension and passion.”

The endeavor appears to be a success; the novel has been getting positive reviews from most quarters and has been getting his views on soft power a wider audience. In his tackling of a new genre after an already successful career, Nye has upset another aphorism: perhaps an old dog can learn new tricks after all.