Soft Power - Making Power Soft

Making Power Soft

The primary currencies of soft power are an actor's values, culture, policies and institutions—and the extent to which these "primary currencies", as Nye calls them, are able to attract or repel other actors to "want what you want." In 2008, Nye applied the concepts of hard and soft power to individual leadership in "The Powers to Lead".

In any discussion of power, it is important to distinguish behavior (affecting others to obtain the preferred outcomes) from the resources that may (or may not) produce those outcomes. Sometimes people or countries with more power resources are not able to get the outcomes they wish. Power is a relationship between an agent and a subject of power, and that relationship will vary with different situations. Meaningful statements about power must always specify the context in which the resources may (or may not) be converted into behavior.

Soft power is not merely non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods, as this confuses the resources that may produce behavior with the behavior itself – what Steven Lukes calls the “vehicle fallacy.” Neither is it the case that all non-military actions are forms of soft power, as certain non-military actions, such as economic sanctions, are clearly intended to coerce and are thus a form of hard power.

That said, military force can sometimes contribute to soft power. Dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin cultivated myths of invincibility and inevitability to structure expectations and attract others to join them. A well-run military can be a source of attraction, and military-to-military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks that enhance a country’s soft power.

Napoleon I's image as a great general and military hero arguably attracted much of the foreign aristocracy to him. Likewise, First Deputy Chairman Anastas Mikoyan of the USSR was praised in 1959 for an informal diplomatic tour of the USA that successfully relied more on charming the American public than bargaining with the White House to ease international tensions. The impressive job of the American military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Of course, misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviet Union had a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II, but it destroyed it by the way that they used their hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia, just as military actions by America in the Middle East undercut its soft power.