Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power"

[BlackVelvetElvis]

Has anyone read any of his books? What did you think of them?
His thesis of soft power makes plenty of sense to me.
Soft power isn't a popularity contest. It's walking the walk.

Joseph Nye wrote two books:
The Paradox of American Power
Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power

The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501facomment83303/joseph-s-nye-jr/the-decline-of-america-s-soft-power.html

Skeptics of soft power (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld professes not even to understand the term) claim that popularity is ephemeral and should not guide foreign policy. The United States, they assert, is strong enough to do as it wishes with or without the world's approval and should simply accept that others will envy and resent it. The world's only superpower does not need permanent allies; the issues should determine the coalitions, not vice-versa, according to Rumsfeld.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2004/nye_softpower_chitrib_051604.htm

Ignoring Soft Power Carries a High Cost

Turkey, Mexico and Chile were prime examples in March 2003. And when American policies lose their legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of others, attitudes of distrust tend to fester and further reduce our leverage. For example, after Sept. 11, there was an outpouring of sympathy in Germany for the United States. But Germans expressed widespread disbelief about the reasons the U.S. gave for going to war such as the alleged connection of Iraq to Sept. 11 and the imminence of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The confirmation of those suspicions fostered a climate in which conspiracy theories flourished. By July 2003, one-third of young Germans under the age of 30 said that they thought the American government might even have staged the original Sept. 11 attacks. Absurd views feed upon each other, and paranoia can be contagious.

American attitudes toward foreigners harden, and we begin to believe that the rest of the world really does hate us. Some Americans begin to hold grudges, to mistrust all Muslims, to rename French fries, to spread and believe false rumors. In turn, foreigners see Americans as uninformed, and insensitive to anyone's interests but their own. They see our media wrapped in the American flag. Some Americans in turn succumb to residual strands of isolationism, and say that if foreigners are going to be like that, who cares what they think. But to the extent that we Americans allow ourselves to become isolated, we embolden our enemies such as Al Qaeda. Such reactions undercut our soft power and are self-defeating.

and of course his blogs on Huffingtonpost.com:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-nye/

The US won the cold war by using both, but America's soft power is what remains generations later in hearts and minds, it is the more everlasting of the two. It's more covert and takes longer but the effects reap more benefits and it costs less in the long run.
Countries and governments who were on the recieving end of us ignoring the correct usage of soft power (Iran, Iraq, and numerous nations in S. America, etc.) are biting back. Politically, we cannot afford more ignorance of our soft power.