Soft power

Soft power may also refer to a soft power switch, as opposed to a hard power switch on a computer.

Soft power is the ability to obtain what one wants through co-option and attraction. It can be contrasted with 'hard power', that is the use of coercion and payment. Soft power can be wielded not just by states but also by all actors in international politics, such as NGOs or international institutions.

Origin

The phrase was coined by Joseph Nye of Harvard University in a 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. He further developed the concept in his 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. The term is now widely used in international affairs by analysts and statesmen. For example, in 2007, CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China needed to increase its soft power, and the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke of the need to enhance American soft power by "a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security--diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development."

In 2010 Annette Lu, former vice-president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, visited South Korea and advocated the ROC's use of soft power as a model for the resolution of international conflicts.

Making power soft

The Future of US Foreign Policy: "The Revival of Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy?"
A Lecture by Secretary Michael Chertoff (Former Secretary of Homeland Security and the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy Advisory Board Member)

The primary currencies of soft power are an actor's values, culture, policies and institutions—and the extent to which these "primary currencies", as Nye calls them, are able to attract or repel other actors to "want what you want." In 2008, Nye applied the concepts of hard and soft power to individual leadership in "The Powers to Lead".

In any discussion of power, it is important to distinguish behavior (affecting others to obtain the preferred outcomes) from the resources that may (or may not) produce those outcomes. Sometimes people or countries with more power resources are not able to get the outcomes they wish. Power is a relationship between an agent and a subject of power, and that relationship will vary with different situations. Meaningful statements about power must always specify the context in which the resources may (or may not) be converted into behavior.

Soft power is not merely non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods, as this confuses the resources that may produce behavior with the behavior itself – what Steven Lukes calls the “vehicle fallacy.” Neither is it the case that all non-military actions are forms of soft power, as certain non-military actions, such as economic sanctions, are clearly intended to coerce and are thus a form of hard power.

That said, military force can sometimes contribute to soft power. Dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin cultivated myths of invincibility and inevitability to structure expectations and attract others to join them. A well-run military can be a source of attraction, and military-to-military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks that enhance a country’s soft power.

Napoleon I's image as a great general and military hero arguably attracted much of the foreign aristocracy to him. Likewise, First Deputy Chairman Anastas Mikoyan of the USSR was praised in 1959 for an informal diplomatic tour of the USA that successfully relied more on charming the American public than bargaining with the White House to ease international tensions. The impressive job of the American military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Of course, misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviet Union had a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II, but it destroyed it by the way that they used their hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia, just as military actions by America in the Middle East undercut its soft power.

Limitation

Soft power has been criticized as being ineffective by authors such as Niall Ferguson in the preface to Colossus. Neorealist and other rationalist and neorationalist authors (with the exception of Stephen Walt) would generally disregard soft power since they assume for theoretical purposes that actors in international relations respond to only two types of incentives: economic incentives and force.

As a concept, it is often hard to distinguish between the effects of soft power and other factors. For example, Janice Bially Mattern asserts that George W. Bush's use of the phrase "you are either with us or against us" was an exercise in soft power, since no explicit threat was included. However, rationalist authors would merely see this as an 'implied threat', and that direct economic or military sanctions would likely follow from being 'against us'.

Measuring soft power

„Soft Power Vs. Hard Power: Opposing Poles? A NATO Prespectives”
A Keynote Speech in the German Parliament by Dr. Gerlinde Niehus – The Head of NATO Public Diplomacy Division
(The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy International Symposium on CD 2009

Soft power, then, represents the third behavioral way of getting the outcomes you want. Soft power is contrasted with hard power, which has historically been the predominant realist measure of national power, through quantitative metrics such as population size, concrete military assets, or a nation's gross domestic product. But having such resources does not always produce the desired outcomes, as the United States discovered in the Vietnam War. The extent of attraction can be measured by public opinion polls, by elite interviews, and case studies.

The first attempt to measure soft power through a composite index was created and published by the Institute for Government and Monocle (2007 magazine). The IfG-Monocle Soft Power Index combined a range of statistical metrics and subjective panel scores to measure the soft power resources of 26 countries. The metrics were organised according to a framework of five sub-indices including culture, diplomacy, education, business/innovation, and government. The index is said to measure the soft power resources of countries, and does not translate directly into ability influence.

Nye argues that soft power is more than influence, since influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. And soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to attract, and attraction often leads to acquiescence.

In international relations, soft power is generated only in part by what the government does through its policies and public diplomacy. The generation of soft power is also affected in positive (and negative) ways by a host of non-state actors within and outside the country. Those actors affect both the general public and governing elites in other countries, and create an enabling or disabling environment for government policies.

In some cases, soft power enhances the probability of other elites adopting policies that allow one to achieve preferred outcomes. In other cases, where being seen as friendly to another country is seen as a local political kiss of death, the decline or absence of soft power will prevent a government from obtaining particular goals. But even in such instances, the interactions of civil societies and non-state actors may help to further general milieu goals such as democracy, liberty, and development. Soft power is not the possession of any one country or actor.

The success of soft power heavily depends on the actor's reputation within the international community, as well as the flow of information between actors. Thus, soft power is often associated with the rise of globalization and neoliberal international relations theory. Popular culture and mass media are regularly identified as a source of soft power, as is the spread of a national language or a particular set of normative structures; a nation with a large amount of soft power and the good will that engenders it inspire others to acculturate, avoiding the need for expensive hard power expenditures.

Because soft power has appeared as an alternative to raw power politics, it is often embraced by ethically-minded scholars and policymakers. But soft power is a descriptive rather than a normative concept. Like any form of power, it can be wielded for good or bad purposes. While soft power can be used with bad intentions and wreak horrible consequences, it differs in terms of means. It is on this dimension that one might construct a normative preference for greater use of soft power.

Just Power

To overcome the conventional discussions on soft and hard power, Nayef Al-Rodhan highlights the importance of justice in the debate and proposes the concept of "Just power". He argues that both, a state’s soft and hard power tools, have to be employed in the service of justice, if this power has to be sustainable. Justice is to be understood here in a minimalist sense, namely the respect of universal human rights. Al-Rodhan argues that justice in international affairs and as part of states’ foreign policies should not be pursued for altruistic reasons or out of a desire to do what is right, but rather, it should be pursued because it is the only sustainable way for states to promote progress and stability in a globalized world. By promoting justice, states will be able to make its influence over others sustainable and therefore to achieve their own national goals.

Academic debates around soft power

Academics have engaged in several debates around soft power. These have included:

• Its usefulness (Giulio Gallarotti, Niall Ferguson, Josef Joffe, Robert Kagan, Ken Waltz, Mearsheimer vs Nye, Katzenstein, Janice Bially Mattern, Jacques Hymans, Alexander Vuving, Jan Mellisen)
• How soft power and hard power interact (Giulio Gallarotti, Joseph Nye)
• Whether soft power can be coercive or manipulative, (Janice BIally Mattern, Katzenstein, Duvall & Barnet vs Nye, Vuving)
• How the relationship between structure and agency work (Hymans vs Nye)
• Whether soft balancing is occurring (Wohlforth & Brooks vs Walt et al.)
• Soft power and normative power in Europe (Ian Manners, A Ciambra, Thomas Diez, A Hyde Pryce, Richard Whitman)

External links

• Barack Obama & the use of soft power
• Global Power Barometer
• Is China’s new communications worldview coming of age? David Bandurski
• The Benefits of Soft Power
• Simulation and Soft Power
• Soft Power definition
• Soft Power, Smart Power and Intelligent Power A lecture in honor of Joseph Nye

Further reading

• Giulio Gallarotti, Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010, how hard and soft power can be combined to optimize national power
• Giulio Gallarotti, The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics, Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner Press, 2010, an analysis of how the over reliance on hard power can diminish the influence of nations
• Giulio Gallarotti. "Soft Power: What it is, Why it’s Important, and the Conditions Under Which it Can Be Effectively Used" Journal of Political Power (2011), works.bepress.com
• Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, Routledge, 2010
• Steven Lukes, "Power and the battle for hearts and minds: on the bluntness of soft power," in Felix Berenskoetter and M.J. Williams, eds. Power in World Politics, Routledge, 2007
• Janice Bially Mattern, "Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft," in Berenskoetter and Williams
• J.S. Nye, "Notes for a soft power research agenda," in Berenskoetter and Williams
• Young Nam Cho and Jong Ho Jeong, "China's Soft Power," Asia Survey,48,3,pp 453–72
• Yashushi Watanabe and David McConnell, eds, Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States, London, M E Sharpe, 2008
• Ingrid d'Hooghe, "Into High Gear: China’s Public Diplomacy’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, No. 3 (2008), pp. 37–61.
• Ingrid d'Hooghe, "The Rise of China’s Public Diplomacy", Clingendael Diplomacy Paper No. 12, The Hague, Clingendael Institute, July 2007, ISBN 978-90-5031-1175,36 pp.
• "Playing soft or hard cop," The Economist, January 19, 2006
• Y. Fan, (2008) "Soft power: the power of attraction or confusion”, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 4:2, available at bura.brunel.ac.uk
• Bruce Jentleson, "Principles: The Coming of a Democratic Century?" from American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century
• Jan Melissen, "Wielding Soft Power," Clingendael Diplomacy Papers, No 2, Clingendael, Netherlands, 2005
• Chicago Council on Global Affairs, "Soft Power in East Asia" June 2008
• Joseph Nye, The Powers to Lead, NY Oxford University Press, 2008
• Nye, Joseph, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
• Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World (Yale University Press, 2007). Analysis of China's use of soft power to gain influence in the world's political arena.
• John McCormick The European Superpower (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Argues that the European Union has used soft power effectively to emerge as an alternative and as a competitor to the heavy reliance of the US on hard power.
• Ian Manners, Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?, princeton.edu
• Matthew Fraser, Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire (St. Martin's Press, 2005). Analysis is focused on the pop culture aspect of soft power, such as movies, television, pop music, Disneyland, and American fast-food brands including Coca-Cola and McDonald's.
• Middle East Policy Journal: Talking With a Region, mepc.org
• Salvador Santino Regilme, The Chimera of Europe's Normative Power in East Asia: A Constructivist Analysis Regilme, Salvador Santino Jr. (March 2011). "The Chimera of Europe’s Normative Power in East Asia: A Constructivist Analysis". Central European Journal of International and Security Studies 5 (1): 69–90. http://www.cejiss.org/sites/default/files/3_2.pdf. </ref>