Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics

April 22, 2004

Speaker
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Presider
Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Joseph Nye, Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, spoke on American foreign policy and its relationship to "soft power," a term he coined to mean "the power of a nation to attract and persuade through culture, political ideals and policies."

Dr. Nye said his analysis begins at 9/11, which he compared to "a flash of lightening on a summer evening, where you are walking and you suddenly see a landscape revealed before you full of difficult, strange obstacles, and then the light goes dark again but you know you have to cross that landscape." For Dr. Nye, two changes illuminated by that event were the "extraordinary quickening and deepening of globalization" and the "democratization of technology" and information about how to develop it at the fringes of society. Terrorism is becoming more agile and lethal, he said.

The Bush administration, which has adopted the view that "we have as much to fear from failed states as great powers," has formulated a new national security strategy that Dr. Nye believes is correct. Where he differs from the president is not over goals but means. "We focus much too heavily on one dimension of our power--military--and neglect our soft power. Power is the ability to influence others to get the outcomes you want." Rather than threaten people with coercion or sticks, or pay them, one can attract or co-opt them with culture, values or policies that have been formulated in a consultative way and appear legitimate to others, said Dr. Nye.

"American policy has undercut our soft power. The U.S. has lost an average of 30 points of attractiveness in all Western countries, including those that supported us in the Iraq war," Dr. Nye declared, adding that in the Islamic world, the impact has been far worse. In Indonesia, about 75 percent of the population was attracted by the U.S. in 2000; by May 2003, the number was less than 15 percent, and in Pakistan and Jordan, some research center polls said more people were attracted to Mr. Bin Laden than Mr. Bush, results Dr. Nye called "chilling."

He criticized skeptics who say we shouldn't worry for their short-sightedness, reasoning that the inability to pay attention to soft power has undercut our hard power. A concrete example is our intention to move troops across Turkey during the Iraq war, and the negative response of the Turkish parliament, he said. Soft power also prevents moderates from being recruited by extremists. "In some ways we're seeing, in the 21st century, that it's no longer enough to say whose army wins but whose story wins. That requires a capacity to communicate, and we are not putting enough effort into that," he admonished.

Could you speak to Japan's strengths in soft power ("gross national cool") and its limitations?

Dr. Nye said, "Gross national cool is a cliché but it is true." Japan's culture is attractive, increasingly so, he said. He added that Japanese policies also matter, Japan being a major contributor of overseas development assistance; as do Japanese values, for example, Japan's commitment to democracy and human rights; and its efforts to preserve its distinctive culture. However, Dr. Nye said Japan's soft power is limited by the failure to come to terms with its history in the 1930s.

Yoichi Funabashi has floated the idea that Japan could mold itself as a global civilian power. Is there a middle path between hard and soft?

Dr. Nye said he had always been attracted to this concept and thought it was a good role for Japan.

Aside from exchange and development programs, what other soft power mechanisms are there?

Dr. Nye affirmed that exchanges are a source of soft power, and that Japan had done a reasonably good job of bringing foreigners in to teach language in Japanese schools, which fosters an appreciation of Japanese culture. Reflecting on the recent ill-advised limitations imposed on foreign educational access to the U.S., Dr. Nye cited a recent editorial by Colin Powell describing the new policy as foolish, in which Mr. Powell used the term "soft power."

Can terrorism be prevented through soft power?

"Giving economic aid can be used towards hard or soft power. Our assistance, when it makes us attractive, is soft power. And to give credit to Mr. Bush, he is the first president in a long time to increase development assistance to combat HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately some of the other things have stepped on our own message," Dr. Nye remarked.

What about the possibility of transnational soft power?

Dr. Nye affirmed that soft power can be used at any level: individual or organization. That is why collaboration between the U.S. and Japan makes their relationship more than a zero sum game.

--Ann Rutledge