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At the 2003 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, George Carey, former Archbishop
of Canterbury, asked Secretary of State Colin Powell why the United States seemed
to focus only on its hard power rather than its soft power. Secretary Powell correctly
replied that the United States had needed hard power to win World War II, but
he politely reminded the skeptics: "And what followed immediately after hard
power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe?
No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan." In fact, the Marshall Plan was a source of both hard and soft power, providing economic inducements as well as making America more attractive to the Western world. And, of course, the attraction of those ideas and values was crucial to the American victory in the Cold War. The Soviet Union held appeal in many parts of Western Europe after World War II, but it squandered its soft power with repressive policies at home and its invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. What is soft power? It is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. Think of the impact of Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms in Europe at the end of World War II; of young people behind the Iron Curtain listening to American music and news on Radio Free Europe; of Chinese students symbolizing their protests in Tiananmen Square by creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty; of newly liberated Afghans in 2001 asking for a copy of the Bill of Rights; of young Iranians today surreptitiously watching banned American videos and satellite television broadcasts in the privacy of their homes. When you can get others to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. But attraction can turn to repulsion if we are arrogant and destroy the real message of our deeper values. |
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PAPERBACKISBN 978-1-58648-306-7 Pub date: 04/05/05 Price: $14.00/19.95 Canada 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 208 pages Current Events, Politics Selling Territory: WxJapan Pub history:
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