Joseph Nye
In an interview with the Boston Globe, interviewer Anna Mundow, questioned Joseph Nye over the criticism that smart power is the friendly face of American imperialism. By the same token, the Bush doctrine has also been criticized for being "imperialistic," by focusing on American power over partnerships with the rest of the world. Joseph Nye defends smart power by noting that criticism often stems from a misunderstanding of the smart power theory. Nye himself designed the theory to apply to any nation of any size, not just the United States. It was meant to be a more sophisticated method of thinking about power in the context of the information age and post-9/11 world.19 President Obama defined his vision for U.S. leadership as "not in the spirit of a patron but the spirit of a partner."