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Joseph Nye - On Soft Power

What power is the ability to get what you want from others? And you can do three ways. You can do it with coercion. You can do with payment, or you can do it with attraction, persuasion, coercion, and payment, I call hard power, the ability yet what you want through retraction persuasion is soft power. Well, probably the greatest example would be the Cold War. When the Berlin Wall went down. It did not go down under artillery barrage of hard power that went down under people wielding hammers and bulldozers. Mothers, their minds have been changed. They've been attracted and persuaded. And that's an example of soft power that was created by culture and values ideas. People on the eastern side had lost their faith and communism. And they basically were changed or those views or change the retraction and persuasion. That's a good example of soft power as you could want. Well, if a country has a culture which is attractive to others, it may make other countries more willing to hear its views or to sympathize with its views. And countries spend a fair amount on that for the United States. State Department, under Secretary for Public Policy with a budget that supports people in different national capitals and other parts of countries to get American culture and ideas across. But probably the biggest source of soft power is not what the government does. It's everything from Hollywood, Harvard, It's American entertainment. The American universities. Probably more to convey American culture than anything else. Other countries like China are making major efforts to increase their soft power. Hu Jintao told the 17th Party Congress in 2007 that China had to invest more in its soft power and they spent billions and billions of dollars on it. The problem the Chinese have is they think the government create soft power and they're not willing to let their civil society free to basically act internationally the way that Western European, or American civil societies able to do. And that sets limits on their soft power. Well, there totalitarian societies do we'll self-power. Adolf Hitler was a master of the propaganda cinema. So it's not as though democracies alone, we'll talk power. But it's true that in a world in which you have modern communications, revolution and more openness. If you have societies that are open, that may help in terms of increasing the numbers channels of soft power. That's why when we talk about public diplomacy, we're not talking about diplomacy between states to states. We're talking about diplomacy in which you communicate the public in another country. And it may not be that communication from government one to the public and state number two, it baby, communication between public and state number 1 to the public and state number two, this is sometimes called nowadays Twitter diplomacy. And it's a factor to consider. It might members Soviets had a good deal of soft power in 945. In Europe, for example, the Soviet Union was regarded as very attractive because it stood up to the fascism. Hitler had the fascism, mussolini. And when you had elections in Italy and in France, communist one, very large numbers coming close to majorities. And I think in that sense the Soviets had a good deal of soft power. They lost that soft power with time as people began to realize how repressive Soviet society was internally. And as they saw the invasion of Hungary to repress a popular revolt and hungry Soviet soft power began to erode. And so by the time you got to the late sixties and early seventies, ironically, Soviet hard power had increased the number of missiles and the size of the armies and so forth. But Soviets soft power was in severe decline. Not necessarily. Its soft power is the ability who tracked. And you can make efforts to make yourself attractive. But basically, if it rests, country's culture, values and policies. Culture and values are long-term propositions. Policies can change within an administration where a leader, but culture and values tend to be longer in duration. Well, remember he's soft power. Doesn't just here enlarge country. Small countries can use soft power as well. Norway. It is a country of only about 5 million people, and it's not part of the European Union. But it is followed policies such as being seen as a peacemaker, such as giving 1% of its gross domestic product to overseas development assistance, which are attractive to others. So Norway has indeed use policies to enhance its soft power. Under addition to that, Norway is regarded as a well-ordered society and attractive society the way they implement their values at home. And that adds Norway soft power. Well, you can see it in the invasion of Iraq. The United States went into Iraq without the legitimacy of a second the United Nations resolution. And when you look at public opinion polls, you see that the US lost about 20 to 30 points of attractiveness on public opinion polls scales in western Europe. But an even more dramatic example is Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world. In the year 2000, the United States was attractive to 75% of Indonesians. After the invasion of Iraq, that drops to 15 percent. 15. That's a huge loss of soft power. No, it can be regained, for example, when the United States helped or use the Navy ships to help provide tsunami relief. After the 2000 45 tsunami. Then you've got an appreciation of the attractive aspects of the United States. And the poll show the United States going back up into about 40% range and Indonesia. Yes, in fact, soft power is not a zero-sum game. For example, if China's sets up a Confucius Institute to make Chinese culture more attractive in the United States. Presumably that can enhance China's soft power. The US, they have US uses an exchange program to make the United States more attractive inside China. That increases American soft power inside China. If we're both interested in avoiding conflict between the United States and China, which I think we are, that increase in soft power attractiveness of each country to each other is a win-win. Oh, absolutely. If, if our culture is unattractive to others than a given cultural artifact doesn't produce soft power. They produce the opposite. They produce revulsion. So you take an American TV program or American film in which women are shown running around and bikinis and divorcing their husbands and working. And you show that in Saudi Arabia or Iran, that's not attractive to the religious conservatives who rule those countries. But there is an interesting dimension to that. If you ask, is they watch attractive to the Molas who run Iran. Clearly not, doesn't create nice soft power. But if you ask, what do young Iranian teenagers want? They want to see an American video in the privacy of their homes. So you can attract some people and repulse or repel others at the same time. Well, I think a lot of the reputation of a country or its attractiveness goes deeper. Cultural value issues that governments don't control. But certainly if governments do things that are unattractive, can, can counter veil those, those attractive aspects. Take the 1950's, when Africa was becoming independent. The United States culture was quite racist. Me we had formal segregation in many states in the United States. And at the same time we are trying to attract leaders. Of newly independent African countries. And the ad, if they were going to travel to the US and wanted to take a bus ride from Washington DC, Richmond, Virginia, or Macon, Georgia. They couldn't go into the same restaurants are the same recitations that whites could. Well, that did not increase American attractiveness of the newly independent states of Africa. And so there's an example in which culture and policies undercut our soft power. Like American diplomats who accurately project American culture in general, are able to have a beneficial effect that made some of the successful diplomats are ones who, who have exhibitions of American films who bring but modern American art and culture who range, who travel, who get outside the embassy. Don't just talk to other government officials, but meet people in different settings who express something about the, the openness of American culture. Well, Brazil is, is a very attractive, not just in South America, but in lieu. So culture of the Portuguese language. So there are parts of South America which you are Spanish-speaking, which are not necessarily attracted by Brazil. But if you look at Angola, Mozambique, or Portugal and so forth, you find that there's strong ties there. And even within the Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America, there's some rivalry between some Spanish speaking countries like Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. There are many South America who admire Brazil and Brazil's culture of football and carnival and so forth, are universal. They tracked a lot of people in North America as well. Well, in the Cold War, we not only had broadcasts like Voice of America, an exchange programs that the government sponsored, but in general, you found American popular groups, rock musicians, for example, going to Russia. And in both the music and the lyrics, you are able to express values of freedom which and openness, which I think further eroded the belief and communism and made America look attractive. So they exchange programs, culture programs, so forth. These all help in terms of promoting soft piRNA a, an active diplomacy has to have this cultural diplomacy as part of its public diplomacy. Well, if the Americans are wise in the way we pursue our power, we realize that a smart power strategy combines hard and soft power. And you can't accomplish everything with soft power alone, which can accomplish everything with hard power low, most effective policies are those which successfully have hard and soft power reinforce each other. The example of a failure there was, I think gives me mentioned earlier the invasion of Iraq. Where do we relied on heartbeat harden it undercut our soft power. But I think you can argue that a smart power strategy for the United States in the future, before it takes a step, we'll say, how do I make sure of that? Hard and soft power reinforcing each other? Well as smart diplomat is able to do vote for me. A diplomat is going to have to convey messages from government to government. Sometimes it's very high levels, very private, not at all public. But that same diplomat who may have gone to call on the prime minister or president at 11 AM ME that afternoon at four PM, have a showing of an American film or may go to what's called an American Corner where you have American books and culture being displayed and a local library. So a good diplomat learns to both. A successful diplomat is somebody who can represent his or her country. And that means that they not only can be inaccurate and faithful messenger and reporter and interpreter of what's conveyed in these messages. But also an accurate representative or faithful representative of the culture of their country. So they want to be both a good messenger at the highest levels, but also a good representative at the Broad and pop your levels. Foreign Service, which is an admirable group of people when I worked in the state part my highs and pressed and how good they were and how hard they worked with the amount of credit they got. I think the hard thing will be adjusting to a modern communications revolution. To realize that some of the traditional skills of being a good, accurate messenger, reporter and analysts have to be supplemented by a greater capacity to represent and communicate to broad audiences.

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