Abstract
The idea of soft power in its present manifestation has been a brain child of one of the most known liberal faces of the current international relations scholarship—Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Over the last two decades, Nye has meticulously pursued the idea and has been the main force behind the proliferation of the concept both in academic as well as policy circles. Today, it will not be an exaggeration to say that soft power is one of the most visible component of foreign policy of many states around the world. Five major works of Nye define the historiography of the idea of soft power. These are as follows: Bound to Lead (1990), The Paradox of American Power (2002), Soft Power (2004), Power in Global Information Age (2004) and recently The Future of Power (2011).
The intellectual stimulus for the project of soft power was provided by the declinist theories of international politics which ruled the academic space during 1980s. The thesis of rise and fall of great powers over long cycles of consolidation and eventual overstretch predicted that Cold War has left America completely enervated of its power resources and the superpower is now in a mode of decline. For Nye, the hypothesis of relative decline in US power was flawed due to two main reasons. First, Nye challenged the declinist theories insofar they considered the post–Second World War US power as the standard against which the relative power of US needs to be measured. According to Nye, such a scheme of things provides a distorted view of USA’s power capabilities since after the second Great War, only America was left with preponderance of power resources. All other states lay literally vanquished. Therefore, such one-sided distribution of power resources cannot be taken as a standard metric to ascertain the distribution of material capabilities 40 years later. However, it was Nye’s second contention which really sowed the seeds of the soft power and its eventual development. According to Nye, the declinist theorist’s idea of relative power was imbued with only one conception of power: power in terms of material resources. They are, in fact, negligent of the structural changes in global politics which America’s rise as a superpower in global system has conjured. These structural changes represent a web of institutions, norms, rules and values, all of which had a distinct American touch, which dictate the behaviour of states in contemporary international politics. Unlike material capabilities which Nye called Hard power, these elements do not push states to conform to American dictates. Rather, their main power lies in the force of attraction for other states to do what is in the interest of USA. In some respects, the argument of America’s soft power was in conjunction with the context in which the Cold War was nearing its end: the ultimate triumph of liberalism as the most successful political ideology in the history of human existence.
However, it is interesting to note that, in his second major work The Paradox of American Power, Nye is precisely targeting the triumphalism which the favourable outcome of Cold War had ushered in America’s foreign policy. This neo-conservative turn in US foreign policy, best illustrated in the workings of President Bush Jr, was the primary target of Nye. Nye criticised the heavy-handed and ‘mould the history with force’ kind of approach followed by Bush administration in its war against global terror. According to Nye, overt and extensive use of hard power resources, basically military assets, in realising foreign policy goals may lead to disastrous results. Such a strategy, said Nye, ignores the fundamental transformation of global politics aided and abetted by the complex processes of globalisation and information revolution. Thanks to the mind-blowing velocity of globalisation, the international system is no more a space decided by distribution of military prowess. Power in international politics, for Nye, was divided among three spheres: military, economic and transnational (Nye 2002, 39).
In a recent rendition of the same concept, Nye calls these spheres as ‘resembling a three dimensional chess board’ (2011, 2). Distribution of military power defines the first sphere or the top chessboard. In this sphere, USA is the dominant state and distribution of power is largely unipolar. Economic power rules the second sphere and here, contends Nye, power is distributed among a number of states like the US, EU, China and Japan. Multipolarity, therefore, defines international political economy. However, the third sphere or the bottom chessboard is the ‘realm of transnational relations’ that cut across territorial boundaries and are often outside the scope and regulation of states; diverse non-state actors occupy this space ranging from multinational corporations, to international NGOs to terrorists. It even includes ‘impersonal processes such as pandemics and climate change’ (2011, 2). Nye argues that in such a diversified setting, there is no use of talking about power in terms of distribution among a given number of actors: traditional notions of power are anachronistic. Power, in the transnational space, is heavily diffused and ‘it makes no sense to talk about unipolarity, multipolarity or hegemony’ (2011, 2). In such a setting, for designing adequate strategies to meet their national goals, states have to take into cognisance the division of power in all these spheres.
Both these intellectual challenges—the arguments against declinist theories and the caution against unrestricted triumphalism—allowed Nye to develop fully the concept of soft power. In his most recent book on soft power called The Future of Power (2011), Nye has most effectively dealt with the conceptual apparatus which underlies the idea of soft power. But before that let us have a look at how Nye conceives the idea of power itself.
Nye’s idea of power is definitely relational: he sees power in the outcomes and not in power resources. According to him, power lies not in sheer capabilities but our ‘ability to get what we want’ (2011, 6). Attaining one’s professed preferences, therefore, is the benchmark for power not the amount of power resources one possesses. According to him a resource based definition of power suffers from a number of conceptual difficulties. First, power in terms of resources ignores the value of context in deciding the outcomes of power relationships. Power is always dependent on who exactly is involved in power relationship (the scope of power) as well as what is the application of power all about (the domain of power). According to him, ‘power depends upon human relationship that vary in different contexts’ (2011, 5). In fact, the appreciation for context as an important variable in power relationship makes Nye particularly sensitive to the role which agents subjected to power play in power’s successful application for he writes ‘most power relationships depend very much on what the victim thinks’. Second, a resource based definition of power falls prey to what David Baldwin calls the ‘paradox of power’ and Gallarotti in his recent work terms as ‘the power curse’ (Baldwin 2005; Gallarotti 2009). Quantum of resources could never determine the exact results of a power relationship and this represents a paradox for even those ‘best endowed with power do not always get the outcomes they want’ (Nye 2011, 8). Power conversion—getting results out of power resources—for Nye is an extremely tricky manoeuvre and given the uncertainty inherent in ‘power as resources’ approach, he rather chooses a relational model of power analysis.
Though he makes the attainment of desired outcomes as the sole criteria on which power of an agent needs to be evaluated, he makes some fine observation on the relational approach to power analysis as well. According to him, there are three principal variants of relational power: commanding change, controlling agendas and establishing preferences. This characterisation of relational power fits nicely with ‘the three faces of power debate’ where ‘commanding power’ resonates with Robert Dahl’s definition of direct power, ‘controlling agendas’ is akin to Barack and Baratz’s idea of framing and agenda-setting and ‘establishing preferences’ similar to Lukes’ formulation of third face of power which focuses on implanted interests. For Nye, ‘command power’ corresponds with ability of an agent to achieve desired results by the means of coercion and payment. It is also the most visible and direct form of relational power. Nye also calls it hard power which in international politics would translate to successful application of military and economic resources for achieving national interests.
It is in the framework of the second and third face of power—controlling agendas and establishing preferences—that Nye locates the conceptual space for soft power which he defines as the ‘ability to get preferred outcomes through the co-optive means of agenda-setting, persuasion and attraction’ (2011, 16). The successful application of soft power depends on an agent’s ‘ability to attract, create credibility and trust’. A variety of different actors—corporations, institutions, NGOs and transnational actors even individuals—possess the ability to exercise soft power and the concept is not restricted to states. However, Nye consciously chooses to make states as his primary object of analyses. Exploring the idea of attraction, Nye calls this facet of soft power as ‘allurement’ which springs from three attributes of the agent: benignity which means how an agent behaves with others especially in terms of generating credibility and trust; competence corresponds to how far an agent can be an example for others and hence becomes a focus of admiration; and finally, beauty responds to the attractiveness of an agent’s ideas (Nye 2011, 92). All these three factors make agents attractive and therefore render him with soft power capabilities. Persuasion, on the other hand, refers to the power of argumentation: more cogent and incisive one’s arguments are, more is the probability of persuading the other to comply with one’s demands (2011, 93). Clearly, Nye assumes a minimum level of rationality among the agents sitting at the two extreme ends of a power relationship. To this effect, he says, ‘In persuasion, rational arguments appealing to facts, beliefs about casualty, and normative premises are mixed with the framings of issues in attractive ways and the use of emotional appeal’ (2011, 93).
In the context of states, Nye finds three important sources of soft power: culture; political values; and foreign policies (2011, 84). However, the working principle of soft power sources rests on context, consistency and legitimacy. Culture attracts but often such attraction depends upon the context: who is getting attracted and by what? Giving the example of the palpable disconnectedness between American popular culture and radical Islam, Nye drives the point home (2011, 84). Similarly, political values are a soft power resource to the extent that a state ‘lives up to them at home and abroad’ (2011, 84). Inconsistencies in dealing with two similar kinds of situation would often lead to disgust rather than attraction for a state’s political agenda. The dilemma of US foreign policy in strife torn Middle East is a good example of such phenomena. The recent drive for democracy in the Middle East has further made evident the contradictions in what America professes and what it does. Such divergence in political ideologies and foreign policy of the state does create legitimacy problems for a state in its external relations.
This brings us to the question of how soft power works? According to Nye, sometimes soft power is inherent in the history, culture and political organisation of a state; in such a situation, attraction is inherent to the existence of the state. Nye calls such attraction as the ‘passive approach’ to soft power. On the other hand, in an active consolidation of soft power, states consciously try to make themselves attractive and persuasive by availing a number of instruments, such as public diplomacy, economic assistance, cultural exchanges and media broadcasting. The conversion process of soft power resources getting transformed into state policies takes place directly as well as indirectly. The direct effects of soft powers can be observed when a state’s soft power creates overwhelming influence on the leaders and elites of other states thereby leading to a favourable structure of response from the government of other states. In another route of direct influence, states with high soft power resources may influence the public opinion of other states which, in turn, gets translated into foreign policies. If public opinion is receptive to a foreign government’s agenda, it creates enabling environment for respective national governments to acquiesce as well. If not, conforming to other states’ foreign policy objectives is doomed to failure. In Nye’s words, ‘public opinion often affects elites by creating an enabling or disabling environment for specific policy initiatives’ (2011, 96). Soft power, therefore, affects not only the probability of achieving possession goals—specific and tangible objectives—but also milieu goals which correspond to realisation of favourable structural environment for foreign policy agenda (Nye 2011, 16; Wolfers 1962, 73–77).
Clearly, Nye’s emphasis is upon the ability of USA to redefine the interests of other states in a manner that it synchronises with its own interests. However, what is important to note is that unlike Stephen Lukes, who considered the third face of power as the most insidious one, Nye seems to eulogise the concept insofar as it evades the use of hard power resources. The whole idea of soft power is a battle in the realm of ideas which is to be won by persuasion and attraction. The problematique for Nye is to make American values being loved and venerated by the rest of the world. In simple terms, it is an effort to establish the hegemony of USA using its ideational resources. However, what Nye completely misses in his narrative is the problem that such ideological domination may also lead to naked exploitation. Nye, therefore, is not very sensitive to the issue of end results of soft power but only with its aggrandisement.