Joseph Nye - On Soft Power

what powers the ability you get what you want and you can do it three ways you can do it with coercion you can do it with payment or you can do it with attraction persuasion coercion and payment I call hard power the ability to get what you want through your traction 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 it went down under people wielding hammers and bulldozers in others their minds have been changed they've been attracted and persuaded and that's an example of soft power that was created by culture values ideas people on the eastern side had lost their faith in communism and they basically were changed or those views or change through attraction and persuasion and that's a good example of soft powers 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 sympathise with its views and a country spend a fair amount on that for the United States State Department there's an undersecretary for public diplomacy 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 to Harvard it's American entertainment American universities probably do more to convey American culture than anything else other countries like China are making major efforts to increase their soft power you 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 creates soft power and they're not willing to let their civil society free to basically act it we internationally the way that Western European or American civil society is able to do and that sets limits on their soft power well there in totalitarian societies do wield soft power Adolf Hitler was a master of the propaganda cinema and so it's not as though democracies alone wield off 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 of channels of soft power that's why when we talk about public diplomacy we're not talking about diplomacy between states two states we're talking about diplomacy in which you communicate with the public in another country and it may not be the communication from government one to the public and state number two it may be communication between public and state number one to the public and state number two this is sometimes called nowadays Twitter diplomacy and it's a factor to consider my boy members Soviets had a good deal of soft power in 1945 in Europe for example the Soviet Union was regarded as very attractive because it stood up to the fascism Hitler had the fascism of Mussolini and you know 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 in Hungary Soviet soft power began to erode and so by the time you got to the late 60s and early 70s ironically Soviet hard power had increased the number of missiles and the size of the armies and so forth but Soviet soft power was in severe decline not necessarily its soft power is the ability to attract and you can make efforts to make yourself attractive but basically if it rests countries culture values and policies culture and values are long-term propositions policies can change with an administration or with a leader but culture and values tend to be longer in duration well remember his soft power doesn't just here in large country small countries can use soft power as well Norway is a country of only about five million people and it's not part of the European Union but it has 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 an attractive society the way they implement their values at home and that adds Norway's soft power well you can see it in the invasion of Iraq the United States went into Iraq without the legitimacy of a second United Nations resolution and when you look at public opinion polls you see that the u.s. lost about twenty to thirty 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% 1/5 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 2004 five tsunami then you've got an appreciation of the attractive aspects of the United States and the polls show the United States going back up into about 40 percent range and Indonesia yes in fact soft power is not a zero-sum game for example if China sets up a Confucius Institute to make Chinese culture more attractive in the United States presumably that can enhance China soft power in the u.s. the u.s. 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 or attractiveness of each country to each other is a a win-win oh absolutely if if our culture is unattractive to others then a given cultural artifact doesn't produce soft power and may produce the opposite they produce revulsion so if you take an American TV program or American film in which women are shown running around in bikinis and divorcing their husbands and working and you show that in Saudi Arabia or Iran that's not attractive to the you religious conservatives who rule those countries but there is an interesting dimension to that if you ask is Baywatch attractive to the mullahs who run Iran clearly not doesn't create a nice off power but if you ask what a 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 and value issues that governments don't control but certainly if governments do things that are unattractive it can can countervail those those attractive aspects take the 1950s when Africa was not becoming independent the United States culture was quite racist we had formal segregation in many states in the United States and at the same time we were trying to track leaders of newly independent African countries and yet if they were going to travel to the US and wanted to take a bus ride from Washington DC to Richmond Virginia or Macon Georgia they couldn't go into the same restaurants or the same rest stations that whites could well that did not increase American attractiveness in the newly independent states of Africa and so there's an example in which culture and policies undercut our soft power I think American diplomats who accurately project American culture in general are able to have a beneficial effect I meet some of these successful diplomats are ones who who you know have exhibitions of American films who bring 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 new so culture of the Portuguese language so I mean they're parts of South America which are spanish-speaking which are not necessarily attracted by Brazil but if you look at and go or 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 at Mexico and Brazil there are many in South America who admire Brazil and Brazil's culture of football and carnival and so forth are universal mean they attract a lot of people in North America as well well in the Cold War that not only had broadcast like Voice of America and 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 your people express values of freedom which an openness which I think further eroded the belief in communism and made America look attractive so in the you know exchange programs culture programs so forth these all help in terms of promoting soft power and 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't accomplish everything with hard Carlow most effective policies are those which successfully have hard and soft power reinforce each other take the example of a failure there was I think gives me mention earlier the invasion of Iraq where we relied on hard bow harden it undercut our soft power but I think you you can argue that a smart power strategy for the United States in the future before it takes a step will say how do I make sure that my hard and soft power reinforcing each other well a smart diplomat is able to do both I mean a diplomat is going to have to convey messages from government to government sometimes 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 11:00 a.m. may that afternoon at 4:00 p.m. 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 in 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 an accurate and faithful messenger and reporter an interpreter of what's conveyed in these messages but also an accurate representative our faithful representative of the culture of their country so they want to be both a good messenger at highest levels but also a good representative at the broad and popular levels well Hank the foreign service which is an admirable group of people when I worked in the State Department I was impressed at how good they were and how hard they worked 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 an analyst have to be supplemented by a greater capacity to represent and communicate to broad audiences

Channel: Foreign Policy Association

Views: 86,676

Rating: 4.9054441 out of 5

Keywords: U.S., America's Diplomats, PBS, FPA, Foreign Policy Association, Great Decisions, Interview, Diplomacy, Foreign Service, soft power, Joseph Nye, Harvard

Id: _58v19OtIIg

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2016