You can just hear the jeers from the hard power acolytes. They fondle the handles of their $25 million remote controlled tazers and say "if soft power is so great, why don't you use some of it to make me care about it?"
In one sense this is a fair question. But in another sense, this question defines soft power in a way that misunderstands how soft power works, and thus a simple answer to this question cannot be given without undermining the appropriate use of soft power. But we can answer the question...
Power isn't only about getting people to do what you want. It is also about getting people to not do what you don't want (them to do). On some philosophical level, these might be the same thing, but on a practical level they are very different.
We might say the difference lies in how each can be "efficiently" accomplished. In other words, to get person X to do action Y, it takes a certain amount of power. To get them to do Z, it takes some more power. However, since there are an infinite number of things they "could" do, it would require an infinite power to prescribe every one of their activities.
Alternatively, a power that keeps them from doing certain things need not be infinite, since it is tied to only the finite set, say A, B, C, D. If we are trying to get X to NOT do A, B, C, and D, one way would be to use power to get them to do the opposite: ~A, ~B, ~C etc. But this may not be the most efficient way to do this. It might make more sense to invest in a more general power that prevents them from doing A, B, C, and D and which, at low or no cost, also prevents E, F, and G if we determine that those are also undesirable.
Both hard power and soft power are used in all of these cases. However, when we emphasize controlling power -- the ability to get X to do Y and Z -- and neglect preventive power -- the ability to keep X from doing A, B, C and D -- we miss some of the important advantages of soft power. This is because soft power acts much more on thoughts than on bodies. To return to our pretend inquisitor with the tazer, his question presumes that we have not already used soft power on him, and that he does not already care about it. But this is not true. What prevents our inquisitor from just tazering us? Why doesn't he tazer us and steal our money, or kidnap us and put us into slavery?
There are, of course, many potential answers to this question, just as there are an infinite number of horrible things he could do to us. Yet we know that something is preventing him from doing it, at least for the moment. It might be a sense of "morality" or a fear of punishment by legal authorities, or it could be a general lack of interest in us -- a belief that we are not "worth his time." And thus, to the extent to which we have the ability to alter or effect these beliefs, we have soft power, and we are using it to keep ourselves safe.
Ok, how Is this applicable to the real world of international and asymmetric relations? Well, strategies that emphasize preventive power, rather than controlling power, are commonplace. The United States strategy in the Cold War was preventive. The goal was containment. Containment is a policy regarding what you won't allow to happen (the spread of communism), rather than a strategy for what you will inist does happen. Containment does not require that states become democratic, or pledge allegiance to the U.S. or do anything in particular.
As part of this strategy, varous soft power measures could be employed to increase the probability of reaching the objective. For example, the Marshall Plan helped to re-build European nations, not in the hopes that they would necessarily become U.S. allies, but in the hopes that this would deter them from becoming Soviet allies. Similarly, the United Nations is a soft power institution that bolstered containment. Because the enemy's goal was the universal acceptance of a singular ideology, the basing the most fundamental international institution on on the a priori, non-ideological acceptance of all nations serves the goal of containment precisely. In other words, the U.N. made it that much harder to expand communism to the rest of the world.
Returning to the orginal point: how do we use our soft power as scholars, policy advisors or individuals to build smart power as an idea and practice used by the power wielders of the world? Well, based on the ideas articulated above, here are some ideas:
1. Limit the ineffective uses of hard power. Identify places, areas, conditions where hard power is not likely to work with detailed arguments and predictions as to why. This is, partly, what the U.S. did with the first Gulf War. They learned from Vietnam what not to do and adopted the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force. The current Iraq effort has also used a more limited set of hard power tools, e.g. by not using chemical weapons and destroying/poisoning food. However, the experience in the cities have shown that hard power may have been used ineffectively in other ways. For example, imprisoning large numbers of potential combatants may not have been a wise strategy. We used "force" to prevent them from fighting against us, but in so doing increased their motivation to do so once released.
2. Propose coherent strategies for using soft power -- strategies that are integrated with effective hard power strategies and objectives. If smart power is a combination of hard and soft power, the two must work in concert. This means, explicitly that soft power strategies should argue for hard power "back up" in certain cases. Suggesting, as many soft power theorists do, that we should use soft power "instead" of hard power or "in concert" with hard power skirts the issue. Use which soft powers with which hard powers?
This is, of course, the purpose of the class. But it is important. When you have coherent strategies, you have soft power, because you can argue that they be used and, to the extent to which they are used and are successful, your argument becomes louder and stronger. In other words, you gain soft power by first articulating what ought to be done, then convincing someone somewhere to try it on a small scale, and then using the results (if favorable) to bolster your argument. Importantly, this sequence necessitates that we advocate for something that is do-able -- something that can be implemented both on a small scale and something which considers the necessary integration with hard power.
In other words, we cannnot argue that "the U.S." in general should use "more soft power." Who is going to try that, and how would they do it? Rather, we should argue that U.S. Marines stationed in Iraq should hold interrogations in public, and only threaten with weapons at such and such a time or whatever. That is, we use our theory of smart power to devise specific, concrete practices which we advocate to people with the power to try them, and then we hope we are right.
