Smart Power Blog

Had a very interesting couple of conversations this weekend with a couple of very smart Marine officers about SMART POWER.

Both had good insights about how to think about Smart Power. Both were very encouraging about pursuing the Holy Grail of Smart Power. They said it’s a very worthwhile endeavor, and both agreed to give it some thot and give us some additional suggestions.

Here's one excellent analogy.
The military has a doctrine and training concept called ‘combined arms’. It’s a framework for helping officers figure out how to combine different kinds of firepower. The question: ‘Under particular circumstances, to achieve a particular military objective, what is the ‘best’ mix of small arms fire, mortar fire, SCUDs, etc.?

The analogy would be, “Under particular circumstances, to achieve a particular SOFT POWER objective, what is the best mix of broadcasting, exchanges, diplomatic demarches, working through NGOs, etc.”

According to one of these gentlemen, the subject of mixing hard power and soft power is touched on in the military academies, and in National Defense University, but only on the surface. Officers are given a basic introduction to soft power, but not in detail nor with the objective of indicating decision rules for combining military and non-military to create SMART power.

I suspect the same is true for diplomats at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), in reverse. They teach a little about military and ‘pol-mil’ relations, but not in detail and not with an eye toward combining the two.

Another point we discussed is how the possession of clear military assets would amplify the influence of what you say and do with your soft power resources.

Also talked about cases that would indicate successful or unsuccessful combinations of hard and soft power. Remember when the Clinton administration sent in a small contingent of Marines (I think Marines) into Haiti, landing at the beach with the aim of …intimidating the regime in power to stop its repression? There was a of public rhetoric leading into the operation, but then not backed up with hard power. It was a failure, and the administration looked weak and inept when the troops had to return to the landing craft and head back home.

What about the expansion of NATO into east and central Europe? A visible campaign led by a political appointee Jeremy Rosner, working jointly for the Secretary fo State and the President, it was an effort to use soft power to extend hard power’s influence closer to the doorstep of the former Soviet Union. These might make interesting case studies.

Ever notice who is talking about soft power? No, who really talks about it in a real, reasonable, and strategic sense. This means we're excluding talk about how we share values, all love Big Macs, can drive cross country, anything like that. I'm talking about how to really use soft power, the power of communication to persuade when it counts: in this Long War.

This post will be fairly brief compared to my posts thus far due to the my inability of integrating my views on intelligence in a tangible manner. However, this integration is currently in progress, and I will have more to say soon. For now, I have been able to identify 2 concepts with regards to the discussion of the so-called RMA (Rev. in Military Affairs) and RIA (Rev. in Intelligence Affairs) that have not been as obvious as there being a need for integration and dramatic rethinking of institutional culture..

I couldn't help but notice the contrast between two global news stories about Africa from the past couple of weeks. A quick review, as I'm headed to Colorado to build soft power with my in-laws.

On the one hand, French President Jacques Chirac hosted a two-day summit for African leaders in Cannes. Discussions ranged from international trade and the world image of Africa to the fight against AIDS and the crisis in Sudan.

What did the United States do? Well, it announced the "Department of Defense Unified Combatant Command for Africa."

More after the jump

Cross posted at MountainRunner

This is the first post in a multi-part series about the design and application of "smart power".

Counterinsurgency, much like international relations, is about the right amount of power in just the right places. However, in the macro scheme of international relations, there is room for fudging and fine grain controls aren't as necessary. Counterinsurgency requires, as I see it, requires greater finesse to be successful.  

Bridging the ideas of hard power (generally kinetic use of force) with soft power (non-coercive persuasion), we arrive at the somewhat new and fashionable term Smart Power (side note: see the Smart Power Blog for one of the few overt discussions on the topic under the banner "smart power"). To counterinsurgency, this isn't new. 

Tom Griffin has an interesting post on US covert action against Britain to influence their politics.

There's a new wiki in town: ConflictWiki. The purpose is to create a repository for both hard and soft power folks that's more community specific with terminology, categories, and entries than what Wikipedia can offer. The goal is to provide an open source collection of information, data, and links aimed at the cointerinsurgency / irregular warfare, public diplomacy, smart power, private military, and terrorism communities. These groups are intricately linked together and require greater or at least different details on these topics than can be found in one place today.

As it's a community tool, create entries related to Smart Power aimed at the Smart Power community (pretty much anyone interested in relations beyond the border). The easiest way to start is by going to the wiki, searching for a term and then creating a page if what you're looking for does not exist.

Last week in class we started to discuss definitions of various forms of diplomacy and where to draw the line. Traditional diplomacy is government to government communication, public diplomacy is government to public. Someone raised the question if corporations should be included somewhere in the mix. Yes!

Public diplomacy is traditionally thought of in terms of how governments communicate their image to other countries and peoples in order to inform and influence foreign audiences. Public diplomacy impacts a country’s image as well as national interests, such as foreign policy, national security, trade, and tourism. A government may sponsor educational exchange programs, international broadcasts, art exhibits, and various cultural programs, to promote their country’s interests abroad. Governments still play these roles, but it is becoming increasingly clear that perceptions of a country are built upon a much broader range of actions and actors. Increasingly, these include the impact of private activities - from sports to fashion to food to science to popular culture.

Due to economic globalization, there is a tremendous increase in the flow of goods and services, especially commercial and cultural products, between countries. As a result, countries are increasingly known world-wide for their products. When Orson Welles joked in The Third Man that all Switzerland ever did for the world was to give it the cuckoo clock, he hit this concept on the nose. Coca Cola and McDonald’s are inextricably tied with the United States. The same is true of Ikea and Sweden, Sony and Japan, and Nokia and Finland. The actions of businesses, which operate independently from government, are now affecting how a country is seen abroad. The traditional axiom states that how a government is perceived abroad affects the selling of its corporations’ products. But now we must also consider how a corporation’s products affect how a country is perceived, as, for example, Beaujolais Nouveau wine evokes the French art de vivre and BMWs bring to mind German efficiency.

Corporations and governments alike must recognize their mutual interdependence. Positive brand identification can elevate a country’s profile in the eyes of foreign publics. Conversely, poor national images abroad are bad for business. For example, a 2004 survey documents the negative effect of anti-American sentiments on American businesses operating abroad, specifically McDonalds and Coca Cola. Similarly, the Danish cartoon controversy negatively impacted Danish exports in the Middle East. Globalization, by blurring the lines between public and private actors, has permanently linked the two worlds.

Commercial brands are performing the role of transmitting national culture and affecting a country’s image abroad. Increasingly, brands are the means by which consumers form opinions about a country. In some ways, Microsoft and McDonald's are among the most visible U.S. diplomats, just as IKEA is Sweden’s envoy to the world and Nokia is an ambassador for Finland. As brands become leading channels of communication for a nation’s image, it is important for governments to recognize the role commercial products play in public diplomacy.

I was just reading Schneider’s’(2004) ‘Culture Communicates: US Diplomacy that Works,’ and was reminded of a basic point, but one which must always be kept in mind.
Diplomacy that works is where a mutual dialogue occurs. There must be listening and respect, but just pushing one’s message. The second point is questioning the relationship between public diplomacy and the government.

Schneider discusses cultural diplomacy as an attempt of a nation to ‘explain itself to the world’ and she illustrates this attempt of the U.S. to explain its culture to the world through soft power. Why some programs were so successful was due to their reciprocal nature. For example, programs during the Cold War where American and Russian writers met seemed to be successful because both parties listened to each other. Most striking was how Russian counterparts were most persuaded about American culture, at least according to accounts by the American writers, who recalled that the Russians were stuck by the freedom of speech accorded to the American writers as they criticized their government. Through witnessing American writers openly speak their mind about the government, Russians understood the freedom of the US. This same realization could not have been attained, I argue, simply by the US government telling Russians about freedom of speech and how great the US is; this is pure propaganda. Instead, Russians truly saw the reality of free speech by witnessing for themselves American writers such as Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck. This can only occur through mutual exchanges where both parties listen to each other.

Today, the U.S. has a ‘utilitarian approach’ to cultural diplomacy. The current trend is that cultural diplomacy programs in the U.S. are funded and supported by the government more when they can be used to achieve a policy goal. Such short-sightedness is extremely problematic, and one can argue for the need for cultural diplomacy programs to have independence from foreign policy. Cultural diplomacy programs are there to share a country’s culture, not only government. The British Council is seen as existing at an arms’ length from the government and is there to share UK culture despite whichever party is in power in the government. With great distrust towards the U.S., U.S. sponsored public diplomacy programs may also be distrusted. Remember how the revelation of CIA support for cultural diplomacy programs led to immediate distrust of these programs.

If the U.S. could adopt a similar approach to the British Council, it may have a better chance to begin to slowly rebuild public opinion of the U.S., or at least begin to opinion that the U.S. is solely interested in its own policy agenda (which perhaps sadly it is).

The U.S. government appears to believe in cultural diplomacy the most when there is a crisis, such as the Nazi threat, the Cold War, and 9/11. However, this reflects the aforementioned view of cultural diplomacy as simply a means to achieve policy goals. Cultural diplomacy and soft power effects are not immediate, but take years to develop and are difficult to measure. It is difficult to quantify and measure the value of the arts, for example, but keep in mind a telling comment made by the president of South Africa that his USIA-sponsored visit to the U.S. was the ‘defining event’ that changed his ideas about blacks and whites living together.

The U.S needs long term cultural diplomacy programs which are to some degree independent from the government.

From Harper's Magazine:

Not in [my] day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

—Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Thomas Leiper (1815) from: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial ed.), vol. 14, p. 308.