Deep Currents

How should America use its power abroad? That’s a big topic, but Joseph Nye and Richard Armitage are big men whose answer may have an impact in Washington’s halls of power. “America’s image and influence are in decline around the world. To maintain a leading role in global affairs, the United States must move from eliciting fear and anger to inspiring optimism and hope.” This is the first sentence in A Smarter, More Secure America, published last November by their bipartisan Commission on Smart Power.

The report defines a nation’s power as falling into two general categories: its “hard power” is its ability to coerce with carrots and sticks while “soft power” is the ability to attract admiration. While we have traditionally wielded a mixture, since 9/11 President Bush has systematically ignored the importance of the latter, arguing that we can’t afford the niceties of compromise in the fight against al Qaeda and the late Hussein’s Iraq. This report calls for “smart power,” a return to the tradition of artful blending. The best way to pursue America’s interests, it argues, is to build and maintain its position in the world as the preeminent agent of good. Doing so is not a matter of high-minded altruism but simply necessary to combat terrorism and address the many serious transnational issues such as climate change, pandemic disease, and commodity shortages. (After the break is a bullet-point breakdown of the introductory overview.)

What would foreign policy of “smart power” mean in practice?

At a general level:

• Alliances, partnerships, and institutions: rebuilding the foundation to deal with global challenges
• Global development: developing a unified approach, starting with public health
• Public diplomacy: improving access to international knowledge and learning
• Economic integration: increasing the benefits of trade for all people
• Technology and innovation: addressing climate change and energy insecurity

In particular:

• Cutting off terrorists’ access to weapons of mass destruction and refusing to respond to their petty provocations
• Removing the institutions that represent America as intolerant, abusive, and unjust, such as Guantanamo
• Using our diplomatic power for positive ends such as mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Provide the world with a positive vision greater than the war on terror so that our people and our allies have a shared aim to strive for rather than just a tactic to fight against

How is soft power useful?

• Providing legitimacy for American activity abroad
• Reducing opposition to the use of hard power, which if successful results in a degree of cooperation
• Building willingness in foreign populations to build capable democracies, a core goal in combating terrorism

What threats do we face that cannot be solved with hard power alone?

• Transnational networks of terrorists, guerrillas, and criminals
• Pandemic disease
• Financial market swings
• The swelling ranks of nuclear-armed states
• The emergence of new great powers

Most Americans consider it a priority to improve the country’s image abroad

What has built our soft power in the past?

• Being an immmigrant nation where many people can come to build a better life
• Avoiding colonialism
• Promoting rules and order
• The political values and ideas in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
• The American economic system
• The American educational system
• American participation in and leadership of international institutions
• Bilateral alliances
• Fighting in the name of liberty, equality, and justice

How have we and others combined hard and soft power successfully in the past?

• We used hard power to deter the Soviet Union during the Cold War
• We used soft power to rebuild Japan and Europe with the Marshall Plan
• We used soft power to establish the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization
• We used soft power to provide international maritime security, international financial markets, space exploration, Internet technology and infrastructure, drug-trafficking interdiction, human-trafficking interdiction, and counter-terrorism.
• When Britain led the world it used its hard power to maintain a colonial empire but built soft power by maintaining the balance of power in Europe, promoting an international economic system, and providing freedom of the seas–the result of which was not only greater wealth and power but also legitimacy for British action in the eyes of others

What have been our most prominent recent uses of soft power?

• Tsunami relief in Southeast Asia
• Earthquake response in Pakistan

Why have we relied on hard power?

• Because the Pentagon is the best-resourced agency in the federal government and therefore tends to fill every void.
• Because it’s hard to demonstrate in the short term that building soft power has an impact–we’ve built soft power through providing disaster relief for the Southeast Asian tsunami and the Pakistani earthquake, but those provide easily-quantified results

Won’t a shift to smart power mean that America has to work the hardest to solve global problems while regional powers stand by? While it’s true that regional powers won’t have to expend the same effort, America will still be the greatest beneficiary, and the regional powers will have America to thank for a level of global collective action that they could not have achieved themselves.

Written: July 11th, 2008