That’s Not Soft Power

I sometimes wonder whether there is any phrase more frequently misused than “soft power”. Coined by Harvard scholar Joseph Nye it is distinguished from hard power. Hard power is either military or economic power. Soft power is much more subtle. It consists in getting people to want what you want to accomplish. There are multiple ways of doing that. Setting the agenda is one of them. The strength and prevalence of your culture is another.

Foreign aid is not an exercise of soft power unless it results in people wanting what you want to accomplish. I think we should increase our foreign aid not to use soft power but because it’s the right thing to do.

As an exercise in soft power I think we should come to the sad conclusion that foreign aid has been a flop. Following the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan the U. S. spent billions on aid and, indeed, for years afterwards the U. S. Navy was Pakistan’s major health care provider. That didn’t stop terrorists based in Pakistan from killing Americans or induce the Pakistani government to turn over Osama bin Laden (make no mistake: the Pakistani government knew where he was all along). The reality is that lots of people don’t want what we want and no amount of foreign aid will convince them of anything but that we’re suckers.

Now to Adm. James Stravrides’s op-ed at CNN:

(CNN)Ten years ago, a little boy walked for two days with his mother to the USNS Comfort’s eye clinic. The Comfort is a Navy warship that operates as a hospital ship in the Caribbean and South America, with a crew from both the military and non-profit sectors providing free medical care. After his eye exam and treatment, the 8-year-old looked up and said, “Mama, veo el mundo.” “Mom, I see the world.”

In 2007, when I was commander of the US Army Southern Command, the Comfort treated close to 100,000 patients in 12 countries, performed 1,700 surgeries, issued more than 32,000 immunizations and trained 28,000 medical students and technicians.

Some people are shocked that military leaders are such strong advocates of what Harvard’s Joseph Nye called “soft power,” or the ability of a country to persuade without force or coercion. But I know first-hand how it enhances America’s security.

Which is why I am so concerned about the Trump’s administration proposed budget cuts to soft-power programs throughout the government. Under the budget proposal for 2018, military spending amounts to about 16% of the budget, while State Department programs account for less than 1%.

Worst yet, recently the President proposed a cut of 26% for global health programs — “the lowest level of funding since FY 2008,” according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Funds for AIDS alone would drop by about $860 million.

While I am not proposing a specific ratio of spending, I believe there is a symbiotic relationship between hard and soft power and that, in both cases, we need to invest in the programs that succeed.

Adm. Stravrides should go back to his sources. Whatever the merits of our foreign aid, what he’s describing isn’t soft power. It’s just another form of hard power and it isn’t convincing the world that we aren’t so bad any more if it ever did.