Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power

Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power

This article pushes beyond hard power and soft power to insist on smart power, defined as the capacity of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually reinforcing such that the actor's purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently. It argues that advancing smart power has become a national security imperative, driven both by long-term structural changes in international conditions and by short-term failures of the current administration. The current debates over public diplomacy and soft power suffer from failures to address conceptual, institutional, and political dimensions of the challenge, three dimensions the author addresses in this article.

There is much sentiment in the United States and abroad that the current design and conduct of American foreign policy is flawed and needs to be repaired. Unfortunately, the debate itself is also flawed: neither the advocates of soft power nor the proponents of hard power have adequately integrated their positions into a single framework to advance the national interest. Advocates of soft power and public diplomacy tend to frame their arguments poorly; their positions are often politically naïve and institutionally weak. Meanwhile, hard power proponents, who are politically and institutionally powerful, frequently frame their arguments inadequately because they seem to believe they can safely ignore or simply subsume elements of national power that lie outside their traditional purview. The consequence is that the national interest is being badly served by an imperfect, dichotomous debate.

As we enter the transition period leading up to a new administration, important conversations will take place on the campaign trail, in party conclaves, and in Washington think tanks about the incoming administration's foreign policy priorities. In the past, such conversations have been shaped mostly by traditional hard power concerns. As we look toward the future, soft power calculations should figure far more prominently in the design of American national security and foreign policies.

This article aims to provide a smart power framework for debating these competing claims and for improving foreign policy performance. It first explains why new structural and conjunctural conditions require smart power and then analyzes the conceptual, institutional, and political challenges that must be met to accelerate America's achievement of smart power. The article draws from a yearlong project involving an international blog-based conversation, an ongoing research seminar and a series of colloquia where the term has been critically debated. It also coincides with the important work conducted by the recently formed Commission on Smart Power, led by Joseph Nye and Richard Armitage at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Why Attention to Smart Power Now?

The growing interest in smart power reflects two contemporary trends, one structural and long-term, the other short-term and conjunctural, driven mainly by the policies of the current administration. The most obvious reason to reflect seriously on smart power is because of the widely perceived shortcomings of the policies of the U.S. administration over the past seven years. There is widespread belief in America and around the world that the Bush administration's national security and foreign policies have not been smart, even on their own terms, and, as a result, that they have compromised the diplomatic and security interests of the United States, provoked unprecedented resentment around the world, and greatly diminished America's position in the world.

In contrast, leaders in other countries have been more sophisticated in their use of the instruments of power. Though not without significant flaws, the leadership of the People's Republic of China, for example, has deployed power resources strategically. The individual policy choices made by President Hu Jiantao and his advisors have reflected a sophisticated analysis of the world as it is; and they have deployed a balanced, integrated array of instruments to achieve their narrow political goals as well as to advance their national purposes. Hu's decisions to develop and consistently pursue a doctrine of "China's Peaceful Rise" is a clear counterpoint to President George W. Bush's approach, which has focused largely on the need to maintain military superiority. Yet both approaches constitute clear examples of policy calculations made by a powerful country's leadership that is relatively independent and not inevitably shaped by structural factors. The leadership of the People's Republic of China made conscious decisions to pursue this smarter course. It could have pursued a strategy of "China's Militant Rise." It could have been diplomatically dysfunctional in its treatment of African nations and clumsy in its pursuit of oil and mineral resources; instead, it created what Josh Kurlantzick called a multifaceted "charm campaign" offering African leaders foreign assistance and high-level attention. Likewise, it could have ignored Europe and relied mostly on hard power across the straits of Taiwan. While the charm offensive of the People's Republic of China has yielded mixed results, it was based on a sophisticated appreciation for the full range of instruments of national power.

the G-eight nations are accelerating their transformation from industrial to postindustrial economies, where power increasingly rests on a nation's capacity to create and manipulate knowledge and information. A country's capacity for creativity and innovation can trump its possession of armored divisions or aircraft carriers, and new hi-tech tools can greatly enhance the reach of military and nonmilitary influence.

But the current thirst for smart power is not driven only by the good or bad choices of individual leaders. Even if the U.S. administration had not displayed so many weaknesses of its own making, there are some longer-term secular trends that would have provoked a demand for a new way to conceive of and exercise state power. In a nutshell, the G-eight nations are accelerating their transformation from industrial to postindustrial economies, where power increasingly rests on a nation's capacity to create and manipulate knowledge and information. A country's capacity for creativity and innovation can trump its possession of armored divisions or aircraft carriers, and new hi-tech tools can greatly enhance the reach of military and nonmilitary influence. Armies and militaries remain important, but their relative role has changed radically, in terms both of how the military conducts warfare and in the mix of military to nonmilitary assets. The world of warfare has become more digital, networked, and flexible, and nonmilitary assets like communications have risen in the mix of instruments of state power.

Sophisticated nations have everything from smart bombs to smart phones to smart blogs. And as states get smarter, so too do nonstate actors like Al Qaeda in their use of the media across multiple platforms. Any actor that aspires to enhance its position on the world stage has to build strategies around these new fundamentals of "smartness."

Smart strategies must also take into account the shifting influence among traditional states, with the rise of India, China, Brazil, and other actors on the world stage, since the old cold war dichotomies have collapsed. Their new power imposes new constraints on the unilateral actions of the more established G-eight nations, including the United States. Designing foreign policies cognizant of new technological capacities and new actors requires greater sophistication than in the past.

A final reason for the hunt for smart power today is that target populations themselves have become "smarter." With the steady spread of secondary and higher education and the availability of more media outlets, populations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have grown much more affluent, more sophisticated and knowledgeable about their own and other societies, and less easily influenced by the exercise of soft or hard power. These newly educated populations demand to be treated differently than in the past; as their world becomes more urban and more middle class, individuals are becoming more assertive. The spread of democratic practices has meant that foreign leaders also have less leeway than in the past to act as American surrogates, as stand-ins for American power from over the horizon. Democracy places distinct constraints on the design and conduct of U.S. foreign policy just as it provides opportunities.

In brief, the world has become smarter, and America's reigning foreign policy elites have not kept up. Until very recently, the Bush administration officials have demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to conceive of and deploy power creatively, in ways appropriate to our times, and synthesizing the strengths of the different instruments of state power. Alas, this has proven a bipartisan problem, as the previous Democratic administration was not a paragon of smart power either, with serious missteps in its initial efforts to mix military power, trade, and diplomatic influence.