Soft Power is Missing In Action in U.S. Foreign Policy                                       O'Dwyers PR Daily (April 12, 2004)

Nancy Snow

Joseph Nye, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has written a new book that every public relations practitioner should read.  Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, is to 21^st century international strategic public relations what Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point was to global trend-setting. 

Nye tells us why the United States continues to have such a challenging time explaining and influencing in the world through a simple visual model of a three-dimensional chess board that is U.S. power in the world—military, economic, and cultural.  At all three levels the U.S. displays power, which he describes as the ability to get the outcomes you want, but it is the third level, soft power (attractiveness of one’s culture, political and social ideals), that is the most neglected by the United States.     

The top level, military, is the hard power dimension displayed in Operation Shock and Awe that captured the world’s attention in the first days of the Iraqi war.  At this level (and consider that slogan!) the U.S. can act coercively using force or the threat of force.  Here it has no competitor and even no close behind competition.  At the middle level, economic, the U.S. operates among competitors from the European Union to Japan, China, and other “outsourcing” countries that have the ability to challenge the U.S. with cheaper labor costs. 

At the bottom level, soft power, no particular individual or nation has comparative advantage.  It is at this level that transnational interactions occur outside the control of military power, government infrastructure, or corporate control, and like bouncing molecules the advantage occurs to whomever or whatever can attract and persuade others to its side. 

Soft power involves the ideological power struggle for attention and recruitment among thousands of non-state actors ranging from international terrorist networks to global social movements as well as the spread of environmental and public health crises that impact populations without concern for national boundaries (e.g., SARS, AIDS).  Nye warns that most of the world’s trouble spots are originating from this bottom level where no one is in charge. 

The U.S. continues to focus its energies on the top level where it has sole dominion and coercive power. 

Nye describes the U.S. military campaign in Iraq as going along as planned in the first six weeks (which led to the hubris of “Mission Accomplished” on the U.S.S. Lincoln) but also opening the door wide to al-Qaeda adherents and other international terrorist networks who continue to exploit Iraq as a public relations recruiting tool in the arena of soft power.  (Note that Bin Laden predicted that the U.S. would invade an oil-rich Arab country and use it as a staging board for remaking the Middle East in its own image.)  Using his chess board calculation, a win at the top (maybe) but a loss at the bottom.        

Al-Qaeda uses soft power for PR purposes that are designed to kill those it opposes.  Soft power in and of itself is not necessarily morally superior to hard power.   It depends on how it is applied.  The U.S. and its allies must figure out ways to challenge the soft power advantage that Bin Laden and al-Qaeda have on extremist Muslims.

The most recent Global Attitudes Survey by the Pew Center shows that Bin Laden has attractive soft power advantage over President Bush in U.S.-allied Muslim countries like Pakistan and Jordan. 

How can this be?  It may come down to two things: legitimacy and credibility.

U.S. policies are considered illegitimate in many parts of the world where populations feel taken advantage of by the economic and strategic interests of this sole superpower.  Iraq has only fanned the flames of resentment.  Bin Laden is able to offer an alternative vision of a just society, however illegitimate the U.S. may see it.  And U.S. credibility, the level of trust and believability displayed, is also on decline in many eyes the world over, not just in the Arab and Muslim countries.  It’s not enough for President Bush to simply say that “our cause is just” or “they hate freedom.”  Others must believe that he’s genuine in such statements and establish buy-in to the same mottos and slogans.  So far, few are buying, but that can change over time.

Nye points out that soft power can ebb and flow over many years and through different sources.  President Jimmy Carter was highly criticized and deemed a weak commander-in-chief for making human rights a principle of U.S. foreign policy but as an ex-President is consistently praised in public opinion polls for having helped to build a more favorable global image of the United States in the world through The Carter Center at Emory University.

You build up your soft power supply by attracting people to moral causes like Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the American South and Gandhi did in India.  Had either leader shown militancy and intransigence, he would never have been able to recruit thousands to what was seen as a morally superior position.  Similarly, the U.S. and its allies must appear morally superior to the majority of Muslim moderates who are feeling pulled by the extremist minority that is garnering so much global media attention.  In that, the U.S. could learn a lot from other countries’ soft power such as the European Union’s efforts to integrate across social, political and cultural dimensions and attract Muslim countries like Turkey to join the EU.

The U.S. has gotten off kilter, according to Nye, ever since the end of the Cold War when the conventional wisdom was that we had won the ideological struggle and didn’t need the foundation of soft power like cultural diplomacy programs, international educational exchanges, to promote U.S. values.  His book suggests a critical need to measure a nation’s security and defense through a soft power persuasive dimension.  Just a one percent replacement of the current military budget for public diplomacy campaigns would quadruple efforts.

Ultimately, U.S. soft power will come down to the power of communication—speak softly, argue persuasively, and listen closely.  On that last point, Nye says, “To put it bluntly, to communicate more effectively, Americans need to listen better.”

We may not like what we’re hearing for now, but as any good PR professional knows, effective persuasion management requires listening to what your potential clients, customers, and strategic partners have to say, holding on to the ones who are already committed, and getting back the ones you may have lost along the way.