Something that always drives me crazy is when I read something to the effect that “we should use soft power more”. It’s not that I don’t agree with the power or usefulness of soft power, it’s that when it’s put that way it suggests that the writer doesn’t have any idea of what he or she is talking about.
The notions of hard and soft power derive, if I’m not mistaken, from the work of Joseph Nye. Hard power—military and economic power—is making other people do what you want them to. Soft power is making them want what you want. You don’t employ or deploy soft power. You either have it and it’s working or you don’t and it won’t.
For the last several weeks we’ve been witnessing the enormous strength of soft power, first in Iraq with the successful Iraqi election and now in Lebanon. Terrorists may have enlisted supporters for their murders and destruction in the thousands but this has gone on in secret and in hiding. The support for democracy and freedom is numbered in the millions and it’s happening right on your television screen. It’s very obvious that these people, Arab people, want what we want and that gives the lie to generations of expert testimony to the contrary. We’re still getting some of that testimony but it’s looking sillier and sillier all the time, not unlike Baghdad Bob just before the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
In the sport of judo, literally gentle way in Japanese, the way of gentleness, a successful technique typically has several components. First of all there is kuzushi, unbalancing. Then there is tsukuri, making i.e. making an opening. And, finally, there is kake, completion. Imagine a box or crate. You begin to tip the box onto one of its corners. This is kuzushi. You actually place the crate onto one of its corners. This is tsukuri. Overturning the box is kake.
I think there is an analogy here to the struggle we’re engaged in against radical Islamist terror. The invasion of Iraq was kuzushi. The Iraq election at the end of January was tsukuri. Do we have the wit and skill to accomplish kake?
Hard power and soft power can work together synergistically. In what is certainly the most lucid article on the World Bank (and development banks generally) that I have ever read, Pundita suggests forgoing our hard power (in this case economic) strategies in the developing world in favor of a soft power approach:
That’s what Jeffrey Sachs is trying to do: point the finger of shame at America and the West about the horrible plight of Africa’s poorest. But….what’s wrong with the Africans? Do they lack a gene that renders the richest among them incapable of turning out their pockets to help their own poorest? Only when a World Bank official is around.
Now let’s back up and take a closer look at the Amazing Race team begging in Bling Bling City. They were begging with a cameraman in tow. So of course Chinese lined up to be filmed giving money to begging Americans.
Human nature. Amazing thing about it is that it’s the same for all. Time to stop treating peoples in the poorest countries as if they’re a different species. That doesn’t mean halting all development projects and aid. It means shifting much more responsibility for development and aid back to where the responsibility belongs. It also means ceasing to use aid as a foreign policy instrument.
It’s pretty clear that we have not made an opening in attacking the problem of the poverty of the poorest of the poor. Can it be accomplished with a soft power strategy? Do we have the wit and skill (and faith) to exploit it?
