by Craig Hayden

As President-Elect Obama’s national security team was announced in recent weeks, journalists covering the developments noted the importance of “soft power” in the new administration. Indeed, soft power’s centrality to new formulations of national security where further bolstered in Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ assessment of U.S. military strategy’s adaptation to current problems, as published in Foreign Affairs. This recognition of the ideational dimension of contemporary conflict is not new. Gates’ reasoning on this subject was articulated in the widely cited speech at Kansas State University on November 26, 2007.

So what does this mean for soft power as an orienting principle for integrating the policy instruments of national security? Those like myself who follow public diplomacy could read this development as a positive signal for more attention to public diplomacy programs, international broadcasting, and international aid. It might also direct military planners to reemphasize the informational and rhetorical dimensions in counter-insurgency operations – as well as the global information infrastructure (as we become more aware and prepared for cyber-terrorism and informational warfare).

But is the concept of soft power still useful as a means to strategize and draw together the new administration’s policy activity – to make communication, persuasion, and dialogue vital at the “take offs” of foreign and security policy design and not just the “crash landings”? (As a side note, it’s really amazing how much mileage PD advocates get out of this Murrow quote). In short, I think it remains an important, if somewhat flawed concept for foreign policy-makers.

I think its fair to say that Joseph Nye’s loaded term is a useful resource for policy advocates to articulate and justify new forms of communication interventions and policies designed to influence the global terrain of ideas about the United States. While the U.S. continues to assess what we mean by public diplomacy and strategic communications, soft power provides a basic set of justifications for arguments about such policies.

A recent round of criticism in the blogosphere, however, suggests some limitations to the term. Matthew Yglesias notes that soft power (which he calls a “much-derided” term) seems to fuel criticism on the efficacy of non-military foreign policy instruments. The “fluffy” connotations of soft power make it somehow less relevant and reliable as a means to achieve policy ends. So Yglesias, and others, propose alternatives – such as “civilian power” (which acknowledges the role of aid and other resources in achieving U.S. foreign policy objectives”) or what Kevin Drum calls “cultural power” (which speaks to options that U.S. cultural popularity may afford policy-makers). Dan Drezner’s almost tongue-in-cheek “social power” suggestion acknowledges – like I do – that the notion of soft power is “vague” enough to be useful in a variety of strategic formulations.

So soft power represents a big “conceptual tent” – an omnibus term that can justify a number of policy strategies. Take the previous examples. “Civilian Power” really reflects the crucial nature of non-military options. While “cultural power” speaks to something more broadly ideological in both scope and effect.
I agree that the term “soft” might play into misconceptions about how belief, opinion, and identity continue to shape environment for U.S. national security. But abandoning the term “soft power” wholesale is not likely to win over those partisans who see a military solution for everything. And while Gates may be redefining what “military” means to include communication interventions, I think the “power” portion of the phrase is still relevant. See the efforts to promote “smart power” as indicative of the rhetorical weight of the term “power.”

So why is “soft power” so enduring? For two main reasons. First, because in the discourse of foreign policy – the power in soft power implies a kind of instrumentality and more generally, real agency to effect required change abroad. The power in soft power suggests the ability to achieve objectives, as enabled by the presence or absence of an admittedly amorphous measure of “attractiveness.” Rhetorically, it’s a convenient way to frame international politics as something other than a calculus of military and material resources. It enables arguments about international politics that are non-reductive to bombs and rockets; that acknowledges the pivotal role of influence and (self) persuasion in foreign publics.

Second, soft power is a convenient, (and critically neutralized) way to acknowledge the pervasive dynamic of Gramscian hegemony. Of course, the stewards of national security policy don’t often speak of how the penetration of U.S. social and economic values abroad cultivates popular acquiescence to authority that may be more ideologically inclined to accept U.S. strategic dominance. When the “American dream” is refracted in the frenetic markets of East Asia and the explosive growth of the Arab satellite media, this is a measure of ideological dispersion. While the U.S. may not be able to immediately capitalize on the global convergence of deeper trends in social norms and institutions- we can look to this as a dimension of U.S. soft power. Especially when, as Nye has suggested – we don’t have to advocate specifics – our cultural traits do this for us. When others “see as we do” – this implies soft power.

Bu this does not mean there are not contenders in the “markets of loyalty” to U.S. ideas. I’m not talking about the narrow and limited scope of extremist ideology. The unspoken “hegemony” dimension of soft power captures larger struggles – like the rise of the “Beijing Consensus” as an alternative set of principles in international economic relations.

This suggests that soft power is a dynamic term; fungible in the public arguments of policy-makers. And the dual tension in soft power as a concept – between agency and hegemony – is currently visible in recent rethinking of public diplomacy. Undersecretary of State James Glassman’s “public diplomacy 2.0” quite plainly shifts the balance away from short-term instrumentality. As I blogged about previously – in public diplomacy 2.0, the U.S. plays the role of facilitator and convener. The U.S. is a master networker, rather than clumsy advocate and mass broadcaster. Is soft power a viable term to frame this strategy? Perhaps. The general shift in policies towards enabling human capital, away from cybernetic models of information transfer – forces a reconsideration of strategies squarely designed to rehabilitate the U.S. image that often justified under the term “soft power.” Public diplomacy 2.0, in contrast, is explicitly about creating environments where threats are diminished – not about improving opinions of the United States for its own sake.

In any case, I believe the debate over the term soft power and the policies to be derived from it is far from concluded.