Smart Power Blog

I disagree somewhat with the idea that soft power is something that you "have." It reminds me of President Bush's inappropriate use of the idea of political capital where he said "he had political capital, so now he was going to spend it." This is not how political capital works -- it is not like economic capital. Similarly, soft power is not directly measurable in the same way hard power might be.

As was pointed out in the post above, a fundamental feature of soft power is that it is much more contingent than hard power. This is because it works on people's minds, rather than their bodies.

In this sense, I see soft power as an opportunity. More specifically, I see it as a kind of "benefit of the doubt." It operates best when the outcomes of policies or situations are unknown (this was the point we were discussing about the show "24." That show, smartly, emphasizes a negative outcome that is highly certain -- it is concrete and extremely imminent. Yes, in those cases, hard power is preferable). When we don't know precisely how things are going to go, we are not trying to get people to prefer our interest over their own, we are trying to get them to risk that their interest is shared with ours.

Hard power works by changing the other's interest calculation by saying "you will suffer if you do not comply," so compliance is "relatively" attractive. Soft power works by saying "you will probably be better off if you go along with us on this."

Nye is right that shared values and attractiveness of culture can help soft power, but only insofar as these assets lead to a calculation that supporting a particular policy is ultimately for one's own good. I think this is done via "benefit of the doubt." When A shares values with B, and B says "this is good for me and I think it is good for you, too," A is likely to give that a lot of benefit of the doubt -- to either accept it at face value, think hard to try to support it, or at least not think very hard to try to reject it. These are degrees of soft power. Negative soft power is when the other side thinks hard of reasons to reject.

The point of describing soft power as an opportunity, as being given benefit of the doubt, is to point out that one's soft power is not an absolute position vis-a-vis policy but rather a combination of how much time/effort the other will spend to make sense of what you are saying and how much sense you are actually making.

Even with lots of soft power, there are some things you can't get others to do with/for you, because even with lots of benefit of the doubt the "doubt" is too obvious to overcome. Canada may be our closest ally, but there are lots of things they would never, ever do (e.g. border fence?). But the plus side is that a lack of soft power is not hopeless, either. It is more of a constraint -- it means that one can only make the case for things that have clear benefits to others, since they aren't going to listen as long or as hard.

So in my opinion, the U.S. does have a soft power problem, but we are not as weak as we think. While it is true that we have lost much of the benefit of the doubt we enjoyed a few years ago, our interests are not necessarily less aligned with other countries. Thus, if we worked harder at explaining our positions so that others could see how they might benefit, we could have the effect of soft power in specific situations.

What we have lost, I think, is the ability to get people to agree without actually making sense. We had that benefit of the doubt for a while, but no longer. But if we do a better job listening and understanding what others goals are etc., I don't think it would be too hard to make sense to them within the context of what we want. It requires that we think a little bit, I guess.

About measurement and the soft power meter. Agreed! Ideally, we can measure this - which makes for a much more convincing case to be made to policymakers.

The difficulties raised by measurement of soft power, and public and cultural diplomacy, is one of the greatest challenges for “us” – those who would like to see more soft power and public diplomacy initiatives incorporated in to policy. As we’ve discussed, if we argue for this to other public diplomacy folks, the need for these measures and programs is clear. Not so when we make the argument to the “other side.” In order to convey the need for and importance of public diplomacy and soft power, this argument is made stronger if the results of public diplomacy measures are ‘proven.’ How do we do this?

Public opinion polls are one way, but limited in many respects. How do you prove the effectiveness of cultural exchange programs? The effect is not one that is immediately quantifiable. The process of changing one's opinions of another culture, and sharing this belief etc etc is indeed a long process.
Such programs lead to very important results and are critical to implement, but just arguing that they are important is not effective. Government officials and policymakers need evidence of this, and I don’t think you can simply quantify and measure the effects of soft power. The very nature of the changes sought is not one that is easily measured. So what to do? How to best strengthen the argument about the need for soft power?

I was surprised to read that India has a favorable view on US's soft power. India is clearly divided. While it may have gotten a sweet deal from the US over the civilian nuclear technology, the country was very much divided over this. If one reads the reputable 'Statesman', which is not even leftist, one would see the dissent - and course there is the Communist party very much disturbed by the deal and the anti-American sentiment feeling America is interfering with Indian sovereignty.

On a different note and related to 'soft power' or 'sneaky power', "wars begin in the minds of men" (beginning words of UNESCO's consititution). This was witnessed in the run-up to the Iraq war - the misinformation which I call lies. It is being repeated for yet another war. Therefore, we need to put not wars, but 'niceties' in people's minds to avoid military confrontation.