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The role of soft power in international relations

We live in an era of previously unimaginable global interconnectedness, where politics,


economics, technology, and serious threats, such as climate change and environmental
degradation, routinely operate and have dramatic impacts across national borders. Globalisation
is not an ideology, nor is it an abstract concept, it is a reality. In this world, the price of animosity
between states has risen dramatically, meaning that soft power is increasingly an integral part of
global geo-political power and influence.
Some have gone so far as to claim that current global politics is embroiled in something
approaching a clash of civilisations (Huntington, 1993). If true, it could be argued that it is not
primarily due to inherent differences or disagreements, but at least in part because of a soft
power deficit, and misuse of hard power, by the US hegemon.
As Joseph Nye, the preeminent scholar in the field, says, soft power is an important reality.
Those self-styled realists who deny the importance of soft power are like people who do not
understand the power of seduction (Nye, 2008, p.96).
This paper will explore the need for soft power and will argue that, as the need for soft power
approaches have risen due to changes in power politics, warfare, international relations,
economics, technology, and communication, soft power efforts, particularly from the US, have
decreased. The focus will rest mainly on the US, being the sole remaining superpower.



What exactly is soft power? The term is commonly misunderstood to mean simply diplomacy,
or friendly relations between states. In reality, diplomacy is not soft power. Diplomacy is a tool, a
means of applying power, be it hard or soft. To explain: diplomacy is not inherently soft, or
friendly, it is simply a mechanism by which power can be applied, that power can be, and often
is, coercive hard power in the form of threats, stated or implied.
In international relations, power can be broadly understood as, having the ability to influence
the way other states and international actors behave. This can be done through hard power
strategies which focus on military intervention, coercive diplomacy and economic sanctions, or
through soft power (Wilson, 2008, Nye, 1990).
According to Nye, soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants
through attraction rather than coercion or payment (Nye, 2008, p.94). A nations soft power
depends on resources of culture, values and policies, and whether those resources are attractive.
Soft power is about co-opting people, rather than coercing them because, If I can get you to
want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do what you do not want (ibid,
p.95).
Any nation is more likely to achieve its international objectives if others want to follow it as a
result of admiring its values, emulating its example, and/or aspiring to its level of prosperity and
openness (ibid, p.94). Should a global political actor be able to attract others towards their way
of thinking, then that is evidently preferable to forcing them to change, be it through economic
or military might, and whether by threat or actual use. Soft power is a resource which can be
mobilised through public diplomacy to attract the publics of other countries, rather than
merely their governments (ibid, p.95).
Soft power is not a new concept, although the term may have been coined relatively recently.
The idea of winning hearts and minds to your cause, to your way of life, is probably almost as
old as human civilisation itself. In previous times the concept has often been classified,
sometimes incorrectly, under the heading of propaganda but the point at which the concept of
propaganda differs from true soft power has become increasingly apparent as global
communications and media have grown and evolved. Free and easy access to information has
increasingly meant that nations are punished in both international relations and the court of
public opinion for not walking the talk. The sometimes fine line between soft power and
propaganda shall be further elucidated later in this paper.

The USs Relationship to Soft Power
The US has used soft power extremely successfully in the past. To illustrate: the power of
Hollywood and American music to sell the American dream to the world has long been
understood, and the space race can be viewed as perhaps the biggest, most expensive, and
among the most successful soft power endeavours in history.
There was a time, from the end of WWII until well after the end of the Cold War, that the US
was as (or even more) powerful in soft power as it was in military might. Its culture, politics,
freedom and wealth were respected and desired the world over. Even as recently as 2001 it was
claimed, perhaps naively, that U.S. culture, low-brow or high, radiates outwards with an
intensity last seen in the days of the Roman Empire Americas soft power.. rules over an
empire on which the sun never sets (Joffe, 2001, p.43).
Now, anti-Americanism is rife, even the norm, from Islamic extremists in the Middle East
through to moderate intellectuals in wealthy Western nations and everywhere in between. In a
BBC poll, across twenty-five countries in 2007, half of respondents believed the United Sates
played a mainly negative role in the world (BBC, 2007).
How did US soft power fortunes fall so dramatically? Simply put, the importance of soft power
in US foreign policy was underestimated and the emphasis on it almost vanished. Soft power
does not build or maintain itself and, as the sole remaining superpower, lacking the enemy of
communism, the US was always going to face difficulties in remaining as beloved as it is
powerful.
The reasons for the decline are numerous and intertwined; historical, ideological, technological,
political, and economic. As the Cold War ended there was a Realist and neoconservative push
towards a rhetoric and ideology of a unipolar world, of US supremacy and the ability to be both
a beacon and a ruler of world affairs. Fukuyama famously claimed that we were seeing the end
of history because the American way, capitalist, liberal democracy had won and nothing
would ever challenge it again (Fukuyama and Bloom, 1989). This view centered on the idea that
the US is strong enough to do what it wants with or without the worlds approval and should
simply accept that others will envy and resent it. The worlds only superpower does not need
permanent allies (Nye Jr, 2004, p.16).
The ideological opposition to soft power can perhaps best be summed up by this quote from US
statesman John J. McCloy: world opinion? I dont believe in world opinion. The only thing
that matters is power (McCloy cited in Haefele, 2001, p.66). Soft power was seen by some as an
oxymoron, that power can only be hard. Nye calls this the concrete fallacy that espouses that
something is not a power resource unless you can drop it on a city or on your foot (Nye, 2008,
p.96).
Others felt that soft power, while it had its uses, was only necessary in the context of the Cold
War. American decision makers failed to recognise that, because of the information
revolution, and other changes, soft power was becoming more rather than less important
(Nye Jr, 2004, p.17). In 1990, immediately following the end of the Cold War, Nye wrote his
seminal piece Soft Power in which he pointed out that soft power was more important than
ever. He presciently foresaw that social, political and technological changes were going to make
power relationships more complex and As world politics becomes more complex, the power of
all major states to gain their objectives will be diminished (Nye, 1990, p.155). He warned that
if the most powerful country fails to lead, the consequences for international stability could be
disastrous (ibid, p.153).
The US has always tried to balance two conflicting impulses according to Keohane and Nye
(1998, p.401). On the one hand, it has aimed for exemplarism, or the desire to stand apart from
the world and serve merely as a model of social and political possibility, whilst, simultaneously it
has pursued vindicationism, the urge to change the world to make it look and act more like the
United States. That there has been a shift to greater vindicationism since the Cold War is
almost impossible to deny. According to Bacevich, the US maintains a global military presence,
and projects hard power through foreign interventions, using a rhetoric of peace and order to
disguise their true motives (Bacevich, 2010, p.14).
Running alongside this ideological rhetoric was a structural, economic one. During the Cold
War, and since, the US military has become so large and powerful that it has perhaps bred
overreliance. If rhetoric suggests that only sticks matter, and you have the largest stick in the
playground, why do you need to care about whether you are liked?
There has been much written about the US military industrial complex and it is claimed that the
US has created a state of permanent war in which military spending has continuously increased,
and the military has the power to influence politics and budgetary allocations (Duncan and
Coyne, 2013, Bove and Nistic, 2014, Godfrey et al., 2014, BACEVICH and Bacevich, 2009,
Bacevich, 2010, Friedman and Preble, 2012).
In 2010 the US spent more on its military than at the height of the Cold War, and US private
sector military spending has exploded as well (Duncan and Coyne, 2013, p.1). The US has
entered into a new equilibrium within a permanent war economy and the very concept of
defense has become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions
rather than an exercise in response to one-off threats (ibid, p.3). Studies have repeatedly shown
that, since World War II, US politics, including both budgets and policy-making, has been
increasingly influenced by the military (BACEVICH and Bacevich, 2009). Simultaneous to the
growth in military influence and expenditure, the soft power, public diplomacy budget has
dramatically shrunk (Nye Jr, 2004, Blinken, 2003).
In 2008 the US accounted for 48% of global military spending (Duncan and Coyne, 2013,
Friedman and Preble, 2012). In the same year, Defense and Homeland Security departments
made up nearly 49% of civilian employment in the federal government (Duncan and Coyne,
2013, p.11). While US military spending as a share of global expenditure may have decreased
since then, 39% in 2012 according to GlobalIssues.org, it still absolutely dwarfs the spending of
any other nation (see Fig. 1).


What Duncan and Coyne (2013, p.5), describe is a positive feedback loop wherein perverse
incentives create increasingly greater investments in military-related activities at the cost of other
spending priorities. Critics use damning language in condemning this distortion of priorities,
alleging, for example, that resources have been directed to a bloated, privileged, anticompetitive
Fig. 1
(GlobalIssues.org, 2013)
procurement complex while Americas capacity to invent, innovate, and enhance productivity
along non-military lines has been impaired (Higgs, 1995, p.34).
Duncan and Coyne (2013, p.26) argue that peace and prosperity are in peril as a result of
prioritising military spending over the wants of the people. As they claim, the permanent war
economy is self-extending (ibid, p.26) and has a dramatic distorting effect on both the economy
and the politics of the US. Under this distortion, it is to be expected that soft power will be
undervalued, and hard power presented as the logical solution to all problems.
The military industrial complex and its need to justify its own existence, combined with an
ideological derision of soft power, has led the US down a road of overuse, and inappropriate use
of hard power, interventionism and arrogance. Is it any surprise that the superpower, who has
become unashamedly bullying, is no longer beloved? This vindicationism, this interventionist,
bullying overreliance on hard power has been increasingly regarded by the international
community as crudely arrogant, a fact that Americans have been slow to recognize. (Keohane
and Nye Jr, 1998, p.403)

Why soft power? Why now?
As global complexity and interconnectedness has increased, the cost of hard power has grown
exponentially (both financially and politically), as its effectiveness has decreased. In a frank
reading of international relations it is hard to argue with Nyes claim that, While military force
remains the ultimate form of power in a self-help system, the use of force has become more
costly for modern great powers than it was in earlier centuries (Nye, 1990, p.157).
As the dollar costs of the tools and technologies of war have risen, more and more states have
become economically interconnected, through trade and global finance, creating interdependence
which further increases the financial costs of war. Simultaneously, democracy has spread, and
information has become far more readily available, further increasing the importance of
mobilising soft power through public diplomacy. The now famous equation, knowledge is
power (scientia potestas est), was coined by Francis Bacon in 1597. Since then it has been
rephrased in a wide variety of contexts from Thomas Hobbes to Michael Foucault (Rodrgez
Garca, 2001). Its present manifestation is arguably that information is power and, as Nye
argues, Information is power, and today a much larger part of the worlds population has access
to that power (Nye, 2008, p.99). Under the new conditions of the information age, more than
ever, the soft sell may prove more effective than the hard sell (ibid, p.101).
The spread of democracy places distinct constraints on the design and conduct of US foreign
policy (Wilson, 2008, p.113) because a democratic country cannot politically afford to
implement policies friendly to a foreign state if its population does not feel the soft power
attraction. Even where democracy may not yet be entrenched, a social awakening has stirred
nationalism in otherwise poor or weak states (Nye, 1990, p.162), one has only to look at the
Arab Spring to see this.
A well educated population, with access to all the information which technological advances in
communication have allowed, is far less likely to take for granted that their interests align with
the US. Even if the leader of a foreign state is friendly to the US, they will be limited in their
ability to enact friendly policy if their population has an unfavourable image of the United States.
It should be clear that, as Nye states, In such circumstances, diplomacy aimed at public opinion
can become as important to outcomes as the traditional classified diplomatic communications
among leaders (Nye, 2008, p.99).
The past decade has also seen dramatically shifting power relationships between traditional
states. While the US is still undeniably the only military superpower, economic growth and a
more engaged global citizenry has led to shifting influence among traditional states, with the rise
of India, China, Brazil, and other actors on the world stage (ibid, p.113), including the still
growing soft power of international NGOs.
Taken together, these developments mean that powerful states, even the sole superpower, are
less able to use their traditional power resources to achieve their purposes than in the past
(Nye, 1990, p.160).
It is also integral to note that many of the issues we face have changed, and are no longer a
matter of one state against another. These new, global problems require collective action and
international cooperation, something that is next to impossible to achieve through coercion
alone (ibid, p.163). As Nye argues, Although force may sometimes play a role, traditional
instruments of power are rarely sufficient to deal with the new dilemmas of world politics (ibid,
p.164).
The American dream, with its concomitant social and political values, is incontrovertibly
ideological. It is based on an idea of exceptionalism, an absolute conviction that theirs is the
right way to do things. As Lipset put it: Americanism... is an "ism" or ideology in the same way
that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms (Lipset, 1997, p.18). As an ideology, an
ism, it requires the winning of hearts and minds, something that cant be done with hard
power alone.
The US led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan war are illuminating examples of hard power being
expensive and ineffective, often even counterproductive. Both the financial and political costs of
the wars have been astronomical and their success minimal (Belasco, 2009, Stiglitz, 2006, Stiglitz
and Bilmes, 2008, Karol and Miguel, 2007, Keegan, 2010). They have even, by many accounts,
made the US position in the Middle East dramatically worse than it was. A piece in The New
York Times (Mazzetti, 2006) discussed how US spy agencies themselves agree that the
American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic
radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown. It has been claimed that the Bush
administration misused intelligence, not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision
already made and the intelligence community had in fact anticipated that the war would likely
boost political Islam and increase sympathy for terrorist objectives (Pillar, 2006, p.3). Famed
public intellectual Noam Chomsky claims that according to Iraqis, there is hope for national
reconciliation if the invaders, who are responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave
Iraq to Iraqis (2010, p.130).

In Afghanistan the US military may have, at least temporarily, subdued the Taliban but only a tiny
fraction of al Qaeda operatives have been captured and the US certainly cant bomb the al Qaeda
cells which exist in Hamburg, Kaula Lumpur, or Detroit (Nye Jr, 2003). The war on terror
cannot be won if the number of people being recruited and trained by extremist groups is larger
than the number who are killed, or deterred from joining the extremist cause (Nye Jr, 2009,
p.163).

Joseph Nye explicitly discusses the need for soft power in relation to the war on terror, saying
that, The United states will win the war on terrorism only if moderate Muslims win, and the
United States ability to attract moderates is critical to victory (Nye Jr, 2003). Only soft power
can win this war because the struggle against transnational terrorism is a struggle to win hearts
and minds (Nye, 2008, p.94). Yet the US has only a comparatively miniscule budget for public
diplomacy, and other soft power initiatives (they are equaled by France and the UK in this
spending) and, as a result, is all too often outgunned in the propaganda war by fundamentalists
hiding in caves (Nye Jr, 2004, p.17).
Those fundamentalists hiding in caves are extremists who are also at war with their own
moderate Islamic counterparts and thus the current war on terrorism is not a clash of
civilisations but a struggle whose outcome is closely tied to a civil war between moderates and
extremists within Islamic civilisation (Nye Jr, 2003). Nye argues that The United States must
adopt policies that appeal to moderates and must use public diplomacy more effectively to
explain common interests to would-be allies in the Muslim world (ibid.).
The key to understanding this idea, of the need to win a civil war between moderates and
extremists in Islamic nations, is that Islam is not a monolithic entity and that mainstream Islamist
movements are reformist rather than radical in nature (Ayoob, 2005, p. 954). Throughout
history, different understandings of Islam have competed for legitimacy and supremacy,
including competition between a militarized understanding of the concept of jihad and other
non-militant interpretations (Baxter and Akbarzadeh, 2008, p.71). The concept of jihad is
probably the most confronting aspect of Islam, but most modern Islamic scholars view the
spiritual form of jihad as the 'greater' and physical, militant jihad as 'lesser' (Sadiki, 1995). The
political manifestation of Islam is reactionary, its goals are not the destruction of Western
civilisation, it doesnt have goals; at its heart is a rejection of foreign interference in
Arab/Muslim affairs (Baxter and Akbarzadeh, 2008, p.76). As Ayoob (2005, p.960) insists, Arab
anti-American sentiment is not based on opposition to American values of democracy and
freedom. It is fundamentally grounded in particular aspects of American foreign policy.

The long, complex, and fraught political history of the Middle East, and Western intervention
therein, is certainly outside the purview of this paper but, even a cursory understanding makes it
easy to see why The major powers and their policies are perceived by most Muslims as being...
deliberately anti-Muslim (Ayoob, 2005, p. 959). Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the
beginning of the 20
th
century, powerful Western states have continually used high-minded
rhetoric of democracy, and secularisation, all the while taking part in interventions, often for
their own economic benefit, and continuing to financially, militarily and politically prop up
friendly dictators. The US has been particularly blatant in its self-interested interventions and
this has resulted in growing anti-American sentiment, opening the door to Islamic extremists.

The data on Table 1. shows a summary of knowledge and sentiment within different Middle
Eastern nations. If we look at the final two columns, respondents were asked to rank their
agreement on a scale of 1-5 and then averages were calculated where 1 equals the highest score
and 0 the lowest. We see that the average respondent thought that the 9/11 attacks were more
justifiable than unjustifiable and that favourability towards the US was on average negative.



Soft power is not simply about warfare, another telling example of the soft power deficit is in the
global issue of climate change. The cooperation needed for the sort of real action required to
avoid disaster has thus far failed to materialise. A war on climate change cannot be won by a
single country, nor can it be fought by a military, although we likely face a reality in which
borders are increasingly militarised to deal with environmental refugees (Sachs, 2007, Lister,
2014, Docherty and Giannini, 2009, Williams, 2008, Biermann and Boas, 2010).
Providing leadership on climate change, and offering friendly encouragement (even incentives)
both requires soft power, and would build soft power resources. Ironically this is often the case
with soft power: its application will often increase the resource, whereas using hard power in its
place will decrease the resource.
It is not just traditional war and climate change though. The US has an image problem and it is
no surprise. Josef Joffe outlines a polemical exaggeration of how the US is viewed
internationally in Whos Afraid of Mr. Big (2001). He says that the US is morally, socially, and
culturally retrograde:
It still has capital punishment, and figures prove that it is enforced in a racist manner.
(Gentzkow and Shapiro, 2004, p.120)
It is proudly a nation of intolerant, fundamentalist religion.
It refuses to be a good global citizen by taking climate change seriously, or ratifying the
International Criminal Court, or the land mine ban.
It is Dirty Harry and Globocop rolled into one, an irresponsible and arrogant global
citizen.
It denies its people critical social services like health care.
Instead of bettering the lot of the poor and unskilled, it shunts millions of them, mainly
dark skinned minorities, off into prison.
It not only accepts, but admires gross income inequality,
It has let its public school system and public infrastructure decay.
It gorges itself on fatty fast food, wallows in tawdry mass entertainment and refuses to
fund the arts.
It ruthlessly sacrifices the good and high minded in culture in favour of pap and pop.
Its great universities (available only to the rich and well connected) conceal vast illiteracy
and ignorance.
In matters sexual it is both prurient and prudish.
It is puritanical and self-indulgent, philistine and elitist, sanctimonious and crassly materialist
(Joffe, 2001, p.43-44).
Despite this seemingly bleak picture of how American society can be, and sometimes is,
perceived, polls show that the Middle East craves the benefits of trade, globalization, and
improved communications. US technology is widely admired, and American culture is often
more attractive than US policies. Given such widespread (albeit ambivalent), moderate views,
there is still a chance of isolating extremists (Nye Jr, 2004, p.18).

How is soft power created and maintained?
So far it seems pretty clear that there is a soft power deficit, just when we need it most. Can that
be rectified? There are three primary commodities on which a states soft power rests:
its culture (in places where it is attractive to others)
its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad)
and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)
(Nye, 2008, p.96)
Soft power is produced through these commodities, where the conditions are met, and soft
power resources can then be mobilised through public diplomacy to communicate with and
attract the publics of other countries (ibid, p.95). The conditions are important to keep
foremost in mind because if a countrys culture, values, and policies are not attractive, public
diplomacy that broadcasts them cannot produce soft power (ibid, p.95).
The US specifically, and the West more generally, needs to focus on soft power and public
diplomacy by both running its actions through a litmus test of international opinion, and
encouraging more of the right international information flows, particularly to the Middle East.
The US hegemon desperately needs to better explain US policies and brand the United States
as a democratic nation (Nye Jr, 2004, p.19).
More than a decade ago, an advisory group reported to the US government, recommending
measures to enhance the image of the US in the Middle East. Among other things it suggested:
the appointment of a new White House director of public diplomacy, construction of libraries
and information centers, translation of Western books into Arabic, increased scholarships and
visiting fellowships, and training more Arabic speakers and public relations specialists (ibid,
p.19). Such measures are just those that Nye proposes as part of a long-term strategy for
developing a richer, more open civil society in Middle East countries (ibid, p.19).
At the same time, no amount of public diplomacy will be effective unless the style and
substance of US policies are consistent with the broader democratic message (ibid, p.19). It
must be understood that credibility and legitimacy are what soft power is all about! (Nye Jr,
2003). Thanks to the information revolution politics has become a contest of credibility (Nye,
2008, p.100) in which it may not matter so much whose military or economy wins but
ultimately.. whose story wins (Arquilla et al., 1999).
In 1937, Britains Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said that good cultural propaganda cannot
remedy the damage done by bad foreign policy (Cited in Wagnleitner, 1994, p.50). This is the
complexity of public diplomacy, wherein an increasingly informed and socially aware global
population is cynical and, if information is seen as propaganda it can not only be ineffective, but
indeed counterproductive as it undermines a countrys reputation for credibility (Nye, 2008,
p.100). Public diplomacy is not a euphemism for propaganda because, as the saying goes,
actions speak louder than words and strategies of public diplomacy cannot work if the
information portrayed cuts against the grain of policy (ibid, p.101)
One of the most common, accepted, and easy forms of public diplomacy is broadcasting. In the
Australian context is claimed that international broadcasting, as an instrument of soft power, is
the most efficient and effective way to present Australias culture, ideology and institutions.
(Scott, 2010).
Scott (2010) passionately defends the role of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in
presenting views that are sometimes critical of government policies, saying that this demonstrates
a belief in independent journalism and that Australians do not just preach democratic ideals, but
live them. While it can be understandably difficult for a government to support the open
presentation of critical viewpoints, it is often the most effective way of establishing credibility
(Nye, 2008, p.106). Part of any Western nations soft power appeal is its open, democratic
society and polity, and its free press. As Nye says, When government instruments avoid such
criticism, they not only diminish their own credibility but also fail to capitalize on an important
source of attraction (ibid, p.106).
Scott (2010) points to the ABC charter which directs international broadcasts to encourage
awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes and argues
that by representing the values of the Australian people and the Australian way of life rather
than the Governments views the ABC makes the most meaningful contribution to Australias
public diplomacy. Broadcasting as public diplomacy is most effective when the audience is
confident that it is free of political and commercial interests. The only permissible influences
are accuracy, fairness, the free expression of and diversity of views, impartiality (Scott, 2010). If
we (the West, led by the US), hope to build the necessary soft power resources we must
understand the role of credibility and self-criticism (Nye, 2008, p.108).
Despite its benefits, public international broadcasting is rarely prioritised now. Tellingly, during
the Cold War years, Washington funded Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts reached 50
percent of the Soviet populace every week and between 70 and 80 percent of the population of
Eastern Europe while in the new century, with huge budget cuts, VOA reaches a mere 2
percent of Arabs (Blinken, 2003, p.288).
Building and maintaining soft power requires concerted effort and funding, both of which have
been lacking. Soft power initiatives are forced to compete with hard power ones and the
institutions of hard power are vastly, disproportionately larger, better funded, and more
influential than the institutions of soft power, leaving them in a subordinate position, lacking
the resources and clout of their hard power counterparts (Wilson, 2008, p.116-117). The
military industrial complex leaves little room, politically or financially, for alternatives and the
influence that it holds has no counterpart, certainly not among soft power advocates who exist
as scattered public intellectuals in various think tanks and universities, or the occasional
consulting group (ibid, p.119).
Understandably, leaders face intense political pressures to appear hard and strong in public
pronouncements (ibid, p.120) but in a globalised world it is not only domestic audiences who
are listening, or matter, and it is important to remember that the same words and images that
are most successful in communicating to a domestic audience may have negative effects on
foreign audiences (Nye, 2008, p.104).
While broadcasting has a large role to play in soft power generation, it cannot work alone. If it is
seen as illegitimate, as propaganda it can have the opposite effect of diminishing soft power.
For this reason telling is far less influential than actions and symbols that show as well as tell
(Nye, 2008, p.103). For example, provision of Tsunami relief to Indonesia in 2004 helped to
reverse in part the precipitous slide in American standing in Indonesian polls that began after the
Iraq war (Nye, 2008, p.103).
It may even be possible to generate almost all of ones soft power through actions alone. An
example of this is Norway which, despite a small population, non-central location and lack of an
international language, transnational culture, or economic clout, has developed a voice and
presence out of proportion to its modest size and resources through activities including
conflict mediation in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, and Colombia, as well as its large aid budget
and its frequent participation in peace keeping missions (ibid, p.104)

Soft power without hard power?
Much of the criticism of soft power approaches is based on the idea that there is a
misperception that soft power alone can produce effective foreign policy (Nye Jr, 2009, p.160).
Of course soft power is not always the solution. Soft power could not have won World War II
and, as Nye said the fact that the North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il likes to watch Hollywood
movies is unlikely to affect his countrys nuclear weapons program (2009, p.161).
Hard and soft power sometimes reinforce and sometimes substitute for each other (Nye Jr,
2003) meaning that smart strategies combine the tools of both hard and soft power (ibid,
p.160). This is where the concept of smart power comes into play. Smart power is the capacity
of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually
reinforcing such that the actors purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently (Wilson, 2008,
p.110).
The concept of smart power is important for two reasons: firstly, because neither hard power or
soft power alone is sufficient in todays world, and secondly, because the politics of selling soft
power approaches to the domestic population of a state can be difficult (ibid). It is argued that
increasing soft power resources is a national security imperative and that the national interest is
being badly served by an imperfect, dichotomous debate about soft power versus hard power
(ibid, p.111).
There is widespread belief in America and around the world that recent US security and
foreign policy, especially under the Bush administration but also under Obama, has
compromised the diplomatic and security interests of the United States, provoked
unprecedented resentment around the world and greatly diminished Americas position in the
world (ibid, p.111). Wilson makes a great deal of the contrast between the US and China whom
he says have deployed power resources strategically to develop and pursue a doctrine of
Chinas Peaceful Rise and have shown a sophisticated appreciation for the full range of
instruments of national power (ibid, p.111-112).
Changing global power patterns caused by the rise of India, China, Brazil, and other actors,
combined with the explosion in technology and communications and the spread of both
education and democracy has meant that the world has become smarter, and Americas reigning
foreign policy elites have not kept up (Wilson, 2008, p.113). In this new world a nation which
wishes to retain, or grow its power must have the wisdom to combine the elements of coercive
power with the power to persuade and to inspire emulation (Wilson, 2008, p.116).

Conclusion
Soft power is an important reality in todays complex, globalised world. More than ever,
attracting the increasingly educated, and informed populations of foreign states is integral to
achieving international goals, and resolving international issues. The sole remaining superpower
and the leader of the West has dramatically failed to grasp this. As Keohane and Nye argue
essentially, the United States relies today simply on superior military power to ground its claims
to moral excellence. This is, both morally and politically, treacherous ground on which to stand
at a time when the world demands American leadership. (Keohane and Nye Jr, 1998, p.402).
The shift to increasing soft power, or more accurately a combined smart power strategy is
desperately needed if we hope to resolve the global terrorist threat and deal with threats such as
climate change. Achieving and sustaining smart power is not just a nice thing to do. It has
become an urgent matter of national security, and it needs to be done well and done now
(Wilson, 2008, p.120)
As Nye says nearly five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli advised princes in Italy that it was
more important to be feared than to be loved. In todays world it is best to be both (Nye Jr,
2003).
Unless we give the country the institutions, the ideas, and the policies America deserves, then
our children and grandchildren will pay the cost of this generations inability to wield power
intelligently and strategically in other words, to wield smart power (Wilson, 2008, p.122).




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