CHAPTER THREE: Others' Soft Power
THE UNITED STATES
has enormous soft-power
resources, and has often used them
effectively to achieve outcomes it wanted. Given America's role as a leader of
the information age, the opportunities for American soft power should increase
if the nation acts skillfully.
But the United States is not alone. Others, both countries and nonstate
actors, also possess soft power that can be used to help or hinder the United
States' achievement of its preferred outcomes.
THE SOVIET UNION
During the Cold War, America's primary competitor in soft-power resources
was the Soviet Union, which engaged in a broad campaign to convince the rest
of the world of the attractiveness of its Communist system. As mentioned in chapter
1, after 1945 the Soviet Union
attracted many in Europe because of
its resistance to Hitler, and in colonized areas such as Mrica and Asia because of
its opposition to European imperialism. The utopian promise of Communism appealed to many people in various
parts of the world, and Moscow
used local Communist Parties to
serve its interests. The Soviet Union also spent billions on an
active public diplomacy program that included promoting
its high culture, broadcasting, disseminating
disinformation about the West,
and sponsoring antinuclear protests, peace movements, and
youth organizations.
High economic growth rates
in the early period of postwar reconstruction bolstered
Soviet claims that
it would overtake the West. When Nikita Khrushchev
visited the United States in
1959, many people took
seriously his claim that
the Soviet Union would one day bury the United States. The apparent
success of the Soviet planned economy
provided the Soviets not only with hard resources but also a degree of soft-power resources as well.
The 1957 launch of Sputnik, the
first space satellite,
led many people in European
countries to believe that the USSR was ahead of the United States in space, and that
science occupied a more respected position in Soviet culture than in
American.! These investments not only had military implications but also
advanced Soviet soft power
and the Soviet Union's claims
that Communism was "scientific socialism."
The USSR also placed great emphasis on demonstrating the
superiority of its cultural and
educational systems, spending large sums on the arts. The
Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies and Soviet symphony orchestras attracted wide acclaim
(though socialist realist art
did not.) The Soviets also invested
heavily in sports, and over the
decades Soviet Olympic teams won more gold medals than the U.S. in
the Winter Games, and were second
in the Summer Games. Popular culture, however, was an
entirely different story. The closed nature of the Soviet system and its constant efforts
to exclude bourgeois cultural
influences meant that the
Soviet Union ceded the battle for mass
culture, never competing with
American global influence in film,
television, or popular music.
As we saw in the
last chapter, American music
and films leaked
into the Soviet Union with
profound effects, but the
indigenous Soviet products
never found an overseas
market. There was no
socialist Elvis.
Government-sponsored efforts like the magazine Soviet Life or the television
series Russian Language and People were faint echoes in the empty hall of popular culture. Soviet culture did not
generate many soft-power resources.
Polls in Western Europe show how ineffective the Soviets
were at expanding their soft power.
Their efforts did little
to increase their
attractiveness. In 1959, for example, 32
percent of Italians, 24 percent of British, 17 percent of French, and only 7 percent of Germans had
a good opinion
of the USSR. Ratings for
the United States were much higher. In 1981, 21 percent of Italians, 12
percent of British, 19 percent
of French and 8 percent of Germans had a favorable view of the Soviets. Only in 1989, after Mikhail
Gorbachev finally changed Soviet policies and brought an end to the Cold War,
did Soviet favorability ratings rise to 65
percent among Italians, 59
percent among British, 45 percent among French, and a remarkable 71 percent among Germans (albeit
the Soviet ratings were still lower than those for the United
States).2 Gorbachev's policy of glasnost
(openness) had a positive effect on Soviet soft power.
In science and technology,
classical music, ballet, and
athletics, Soviet culture was attractive, but the absence of popular cultural exports limited
its impact. Even more
important, Soviet propaganda
was inconsistent with its
policies. At home, Soviet
claims were undercut by the revelations that followed de-Stalinization in
1956, and later by an economic slowdown as
the central planning system failed to keep pace with markets that were
becoming ever more flexible in the
advancing information age. In foreign
policy, Soviet claims to leadership of progressive anti-imperial forces were
belied by the invasion of Hungary
in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968
and the crackdown in Poland in
1981. A closed system, lack of an attractive popular culture,
and heavy-handed foreign policies meant that
the Soviet Union was never a serious competitor with the United States
in soft power during the Cold War.
EUROPE
Currently, the closest competitor to the United States in
soft power resources is Europe. European art, literature, music, design,
fashion, and food have long served as global cultural magnets. Taken individually,
many European states have a strong cultural attractiveness: half of the ten most widely spoken languages in the
world are European.[3] Spanish and
Portuguese link Iberia to Latin America, English is the
language of the United States and
the far-flung Commonwealth,
and there are nearly 50 Francophone
countries who meet at a biannual summit at which they discuss policies and
celebrate their status as countries having French in common. France spends close to $1 billion a year to spread French
civilization around the world. As seen
from distant Singapore,
"France's soft power
has been
clearly maintained or even increased in the past fifty
years, although Paris may no longer
be the prime intellectual, cultural
and philosophical capital
of the world."[4] But the soft
power does not rest only on language
use. One advocate of "Asian values," former Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia,
refers to the new concerns about environment and human rights as "European values."[5]
In terms of other
potential soft power resources:
● France ranks first in Nobel Prizes for literature;
Britain, Germany, and Spain are third, fourth and fifth.
● Britain, Germany,
and France rank second, third, and fourth in Nobel Prizes in physics and
chemistry.
● Britain, Germany,
and France are third, fourth, and fifth (behind the U.S. and Japan) in music sales.
● Germany and
Britain are third and fourth in book sales, and fourth and fifth as Internet
website hosts.
● France ranks ahead of
the United States in attracting tourists (albeit heavily from its
neighbors in Europe).
● Britain is first
and Germany is second in attracting applications for
political asylum.
● France, Germany, Italy, and Britain have higher life
expectancy at birth than does the U.S.
● Almost all European countries outrank the United States
in overseas development assistance as a percent of GDP.[6]
● Soccer, Europe's
primary sport, is far more popular globally than American football or
baseball.
● European popular
music has a global following.
● European
multinationals have brands with global name recognition.
● Though much
smaller than the United States, Britain and France each spend about the same
as the United States on public
diplomacy.
No single European state can hope to compete with the
United States in size, but taken as a whole, Europe has a market of equivalent
size, and a somewhat larger population.
Furthermore, the European Union as a symbol of a uniting Europe itself carries a good deal of soft power. Polls
conducted in July 2002 found
that a majority of Americans
had a favorable
image of the European Union, and ranked
it fourth for its
influence in the world behind the United States, Britain, and China.? The idea that war
is now unthinkable among
countries that fought bitterly for
centuries, and that Europe has become an
island of peace and prosperity creates a positive image
in much of the world. In
the late 1980s, when Eastern Europeans were asked which
countries would serve as models
for their future in terms of economic growth, equality,
democracy, and individual
freedoms, Western Europe outranked
the United States. Even in pro-American Poland, a survey of Warsaw youth in
1986 showed that half would
choose a West European country as a
place to live if given
a free choice,
compared to 8 percent who would choose the United States and 4 percent who would
opt for another socialist country.
Both the Polish and
Czechoslovak election campaigns in 1989 were marked by the slogan "back
to Europe."[8]
With the end of the
Cold War, the goal of joining the European Union became a magnet
that meant the entire region of
Eastern Europe oriented itself toward Brussels. In a
1991 poll, 75
percent in Czechoslovakia had a favorable
view of the European Economic
Community (64 percent said the United States was a good
influence).[9] The newly
free countries adapted
their domestic laws and policies to conform with West European
standards. Ironically, in 2003,
a higher portion
of people in the
13 candidate countries ranked the EU as
attractive (54 percent) than
did citizens of the 15 EU countries themselves
(47 percent).[10] The historian
Timothy Garton Ash has written that
Europe's "soft power is demonstrated by the fact that not only
millions of individuals but also whole
states want to enter it. Turkey, for example."[11] In Turkey, the desire to join the EU led the
government to pass difficult legislation reducing the role of the military in politics and improving
Turkey's record on human rights issues.
This is why Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's efforts
during the Iraq War to divide "old and new Europe" were so clumsy
and heavy-handed. While the United States still enjoys a fund
of goodwill in Eastern Europe
left over from its
opposition to the
Soviet Union during the Cold War, polls show that Eastern Europeans
see their long-run future tied to the European Union and do not wish to
have to choose
between Europe and the United
States. The EU knows that it holds this soft-power card and has used it to
obtain the policy outcomes it
preferred. For example, when President
Bush called European leaders in
December 2002 to urge them
to admit Turkey to the European Union, they regarded his calls
as a cynical ploy to persuade
Turkey to support the United States over Iraq, and he was told that this would be a purely European
decision.[12]
A measure of the
EU's emerging soft power is the view
that it is a positive force for
solving global problems. In the wake of
the Iraq War, Eastern Europeans and Turks gave the EU higher marks than the United States for
playing a positive role
on a variety of issues ranging
from fighting terrorism
to reducing poverty to
protecting the environment. Despite
the fact that many Eastern European leaders supported
the U.S.-led war, their
citizens felt that the EU plays a more positive role than
the U.S. on a variety of transnational
issues.[13] Shirley Williams, a British political leader,
has concluded, "Europe's
military strength, its 'hard power,' may be derisory as Donald Rumsfeld implied.
Its 'soft power'... is formidable
indeed."[14] The vast majority of Americans recognize
this as well: nearly nine in ten agree that the EU can help solve world problems
through diplomacy, trade, and development aid even though it is not as militarily powerful as the U.S.[15]
Of course, Europe
still faces a number of problems as its division over Iraq
illustrated. It is united on trade, monetary policy, and agriculture, and
increasingly on human
rights and criminal
laws. It is seeking a stronger constitution, which
will create a presidency and a foreign minister, but when
there is disagreement, foreign
and defense policies will remain
effectively with national
governments. Money and guns,
the traditional high cards of
hard state power, remain primarily under the control of the member
states. Moreover, bureaucratic obstacles
and rigid labor markets may hamper rapid economic
growth, and underlying demographic trends are unfavorable. If
nothing changes, by 2050, the median age may be 52 (it will be
35 in the U.S.). With a population that is
not only aging but shrinking, Europe will have to accept increasing numbers of immigrants
(which is politically difficult) or accept
that being older and smaller will diminish its influence in world
affairs. As one demographer put it,
the Europeans are "aging in a world that is
becoming younger. And in a global economy, they're not going to share in the energy
and vitality that comes with a younger population."[16]
At the same
time, many European domestic policies
appeal to young populations in
modern democracies. For example, European policies on capital punishment, gun
control, climate change, and the rights
of homosexuals are probably
closer to the views
of many younger people in rich countries around the world
than are American
government policies. The new
constitution of South Africa
bears more resemblance to
the European Convention on Human Rights than
to the American Bill of Rights. The First Amendment expert
Fred Schauer points out,
"On issues of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and equality, for example, the United States is seen as representing
an extreme position, whether it be in the degree of its
legal protection of press
misbehavior and of racist and other
forms of hateful speech or in its unwillingness to treat race-based affirmative
action as explicitly constitutionally permissible."[17] It is also
interesting that European precedents are now being cited in American law. When
the American Supreme Court decided
the case of Lawrence v.
Texas regarding sexual privacy
in 2003, the majority opinion cited
a 1981 decision
of the European Court of Human Rights for the first time.
On economic policies
as well, though many people admire
the success of the
American economy, not all
extol it as a model
for other countries. Some prefer the European approach, in which
government plays a greater role
in the economy
than it does in the United States. Social safety nets and unions are stronger and labor markets more regulated
in Europe. American
cultural attitudes, bankruptcy
laws, and financial structures more strongly favor entrepreneurs
than do European ones, but many people in Europe object to the price
of high levels of
inequality and insecurity that accompany America's greater reliance
on market forces. America does better
than Europe in job
creation, with less than
half the rate of unemployment in Germany, but The
Economist concludes that "the notion that the American economy stands on
top of the world is questionable. It is
also vulnerable to criticism
because of its wider income
inequality."[18] The lowest 10
percent of people in America's income distribution were only thirteenth
from the bottom in average income when
compared with relatively poor people in other advanced economies. Many Europeans ranked higher. The superior job performance
of the American economy does not alone
make it more attractive than Europe's.[19]
For example, in the 1991 poll cited
earlier, majorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria
said a social democracy along the
lines of Sweden was most appropriate for their countries.[20]
In addition to its
attractive culture and domestic policies, Europe
also derives soft power from its
foreign policies, which often
contribute to global public goods. Of
course not all European policies
are far-sighted-witness its protectionist common agricultural
policy, which damages farmers in poor countries-but Europe gains credibility
from its positions on global climate change, international law, and
human rights treaties. Moreover, Europeans provide 70 percent of overseas development
assistance to poor countries-four times more
than the United States. Europe
also has ten
times as many troops as
the United States involved in peacekeeping operations under
multilateral organizations such
as the UN
and NATO.[21] France took the
lead recently in sending a mission to
the Congo. In 2003, France and Germany had more than twice as many
troops in Kosovo as
the United States, and
Europeans working through NATO took charge of the International Security Force in Afghanistan.
Europeans have been less likely to shrink from the hard tasks of nation building that
America initially eschewed under the Bush administration. In many ways, Europeans
are more adept and comfortable than
the United States in deploying the civilian resources that enhance soft power. British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw has argued,
"Europe's experience in
the exercise of the subtle art
of soft power could prove indispensable to
the reconstruction of Iraq. The EU tends to exert its influence overseas via the promotion of democracy and development through trade and aid. The results have been impressive in
central and eastern Europe."[22]
In recent years Europeans have also
been more comfortable with and
adept at using multilateral
institutions than Americans.
This is in part a reflection of their
experiences in the development of the European Union and in part a reflection
of their self-interest in seeking
multilateral constraints on the world's only superpower. But whatever the
reasons, in a world where
unilateralism is heavily criticized,
the European propensity toward multilateralism makes European countries'
policies attractive to
many other countries. Europeans have used their soft power in multilateral
institutions to deprive the United
States of the legitimizing effects
of such support. As we
saw in chapter I, France was able
to create a
coalition that countered
American soft power by preventing
a second Security Council resolution before the Iraq
War. As the political analyst Andrew
Moravscik points out, "In country
after country, polls have shown
that a second United Nations
Security Council resolution would have
given public opinion a 30-40
per cent swing towards military
action."[23] Instead, the United States had to pay a higher price than necessary for
the war both in soft power and in the subsequent costs of policing and reconstructing Iraq.
The European preference for multilateral cooperation has
generated a few successes
that have increased
Europe's soft power as well as
its economic power. Mter a bumpy start, the Airbus
consortium surpassed Boeing
as the world's leading manufacturer of commercial
jetliners. In the mobile phone industry, European governments
agreed on a single regulatory standard, GSM, as
early as 1987, while Americans used
a market-driven approach to
allow a standard to emerge
and dominate. The result
was that Europe developed a stronger infrastructure than
the United States and was
able to dominate the wireless market
in the 1990s.24 A future test of the European approach will be the Galileo
global navigation satellite system, Europe's
answer to the U.S.-based Global Positioning System
(GPS). While excessive bureaucracy can hamper the European approach, the ability to work cooperatively on large
information infrastructure
projects that serve as
global public goods can
increase Europe's soft power as well as its economic power.
Europeans also invest more in their public diplomacy, as
we shall see in the next chapter. The Europeans have a longer tradition and spend more, particularly in international cultural relations,
an area in which France had the
highest per capita spending, over $17 and more
than four times
that of second-ranked Canada; Britain and Sweden rank third and fourth.
In comparison, American State
Department funding for international cultural programs spending
was only 65 cents per capita.[25] In
addition, European
countries have been increasing their
efforts to recruit students to their schools and universities from other
parts of the world.
Not only can European soft power be used to counter
American soft power and raise the price of
unilateral actions, but it can also be a source of assistance and
reinforcement for American soft power and increase the likelihood
of the United States' achieving its
objectives. Soft power can be
shared and used in a
cooperative fashion. European
promotion of democracy and human
rights helps advance shared values
that are consistent with
American objectives. The Islamist extremists
of AI Qaeda are fighting
against Western values, not
just American values, and European public diplomacy that counters
their appeal is beneficial to the
United States.
French political leaders have often talked about creating
a multipolar balance of power, but
many Europeans see such dreams as unrealistic in the current world situation.
Most Europeans realize that
multilateral diplomacy is possible even without a multipolar military
balance, and they would be happy to
share their soft power with the United States if we would be more
consultative in our approach. As a sympathetic British observer put the point
during the Iraq war, "Maddening
contradictions have all along been at the
heart of the willful
destruction of the international security system during the past
few months. The U.S.
quest for untrammeled
primacy is doomed.
America's security and prosperity depend
on its political influence as much as
on its military might. The U.S. has been strong because it has been
admired."[26] In other words, the
extent to which the growth of European soft power is an
asset or a liability for the
United States depends upon American policies and rests very much on America's own choices.
European soft power can be used to help or hurt the United States, depending
on how America behaves.
ASIA
Asian
countries also have
impressive potential resources for
soft power. The arts,
fashion, and cuisine of
Asia's ancient cultures have already
had a
strong impact on other parts of
the world for centuries.
But Asia also went through a
period of relative decline as it lagged behind Western nations that went
through the industrial revolution,
and that cut into its
influence. The Asian Development Bank has calculated
that in 1820, at the beginning
of the industrial age, Asia made up an
estimated three-fifths of world
product. By 1940, this had fallen to one-fifth, even though the region
was home to three-fifths of world population. Rapid
economic growth has brought that back to two-fifths
today, and the bank speculates that Asia
could return to
its historical levels
by 202 5,27 In
the last two decades of the twentieth century, China, Asia's largest country, had high annual growth
rates of 7 to 9 percent that led to a
remarkable tripling of its GNP and
enhanced its reputation
and soft power. Nonetheless,
even China has a long way to go, and faces many obstacles to its development. At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, the
American economy was more than twice the size of China's. And, as a Singapore columnist observed, "When
it comes to soft power, it will take much longer before it can make an impact
close to what the V.S. enjoys now."[28]
In the 1950s, the mention of Asia conjured up images
of poverty and starvation. There was a brief political infatuation among some in the West in the
1960s with Nehru jackets and Maoist revolution, but it was relatively brief. As John Lennon sang at
the height of the antiwar
movement, "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you're
not going to make it with anyone anyhow."[29] The real resurgence of
Asia began with the economic success
of Japan. Asians often refer to
the image of geese
flying in formation
to describe the way
that smaller countries like
Singapore, South Korea,
Malaysia, and others closely followed Japan's strategy of targeting strategic industries for
development, financing major
projects, exporting
fiercely, and protecting infant industries.
One of Malaysia's economic planners
has noted, "Japan's experience of
rebuilding after the war, the
way it got workers and management to cooperate
and got the economy to grow in leaps and bounds, seems very Asian to us. It has much more relevance to our society than the experience of the West."[30] Japan's personal
income increased from
20 percent of the U. S. level in 1950 to 75 percent by the end of the century, a remarkable performance that
not only made Japanese wealthy but also
enhanced the country's soft power.
The Asian economic
miracle helped support an
ideology of Asian values that was
often a convenient excuse for
authoritarian leaders to maintain political stability. For example,
Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia
resisted pressure for more
democracy and human rights on the grounds that the West was trying to impose alien values that favor
individual rights on
an ancient culture where the highest value is
placed on the welfare of
society as a whole. Asian values became
an assertion of regional identity by nations that had begun to flex their economic muscle and to develop their own political systems.[31] But after
the Asian economic crisis
of 1997 and the consequent slowdown of growth in many countries in
the region, other voices began
to be heard. The New York Times reported, "Today, there is a slow, daily tug of war between
the old-guard traditionalists-the former Asian values crowd-and the insurgents
of an open society, who are
developing a sort of indigenous
version of Western values."[32] Asian
corporate models rested heavily
on family relationships and connections
to government that were
opaque to outsiders. But, as
The Economist observed, that "opacity costs money, as untrusting foreign
investors demand bigger returns. And all Asian countries crave the cloak of international respectability from membership of the OECD
club to the kudos
of hosting the Olympic Games or
World Cup."[33] The Asian economic miracle was real and for a
time generated soft power for the successful countries,
but when it ran into trouble in the 1990s, it lost the clout to sustain the myth that
it supported or resulted from Asian values.
Japan has more potential soft power resources
than any other Asian
country. It is
the first non-Western country
that was able to fully modernize to the point of equality with the West in income and technology while showing
that it is possible to maintain a unique culture. Today Japan ranks...
●… first in the world in number of patents
●… third in expenditure on research and development
as a percent of gross domestic product
●… third in international air travel
●… second in book sales and music sales
●… second in the number of
Internet hosts
●… second in high-tech exports
●… first in development assistance
●… first for life expectancy[34]
Japan is home to three of
the top 25 multinational brand names, Toyota, Honda, and Sony.[35] In the 1980s Japan derived considerable
soft power from its manufacturing prowess. The writer
Douglas McGray observed, "Seeking
guidance on everything from 'quality circles' to
'just in time'
inventory management, U.S. corporate executives bought stacks of books
on Japanese management techniques."[36]
The decade-long economic slowdown of the
1990S tarnished Japan's
reputation for economic prowess, but
it did not erase the nation's soft-power resources. "Instead of collapsing beneath its political and
economic misfortunes,"
writes McGray,
"Japan's global
cultural influence has only grown.
In fact, from pop music
to consumer electronics,
architecture to fashion, and food to
art, Japan has far greater
cultural influence now than
it did in the
1980s when it was an
economic superpower."[37]
Japanese manufacturers rule the roost in home video games. Japanese images
dominated children's dreams
quite handily over the last five years
with their mix of cuteness and
power. Pokemon cartoons are
broadcast in 65 countries, and Japanese animation is a huge
hit with American filmmakers and teenagers.
Its style has spilled
over into American design
trends as well,[38]
Japan's popular culture was
still producing potential soft-power resources even after its economy
slowed down.
Japanese
cultural attraction is
not limited to its
pop culture. Japan's
traditional arts, design, and cuisine have long found
followers outside the country. Authors like Nobel Prize-winning Kenzaburo Oe have
wide international audiences. In film, Akira Kurosawa is considered one
of the great directors of all time. In classical music, Seiji
Ozawa, the former director of the Boston Symphony, is widely renowned.
Japan also benefits from the cultural attractiveness of its traditional spiritual disciplines such
as Zen Buddhism and the martial arts.
But there are also
limits to Japan's soft power.
Unlike Germany, which repudiated its
past aggression and reconciled with
its neighbors in the framework of the
European Union, Japan has never fully come
to terms with its
record of foreign aggression
in the 1930s. The residual suspicion
that lingers in countries such
as China and Korea sets limits on Japan's soft power. Japan does not have the full admiration of its Asian neighbors.
A I996 Japanese poll
that asked which features of Japanese culture were attractive
found that 72 per-
cent of Chinese were
interested in Japanese
household appliances and 6 I
percent in its style of business
management, but only 11 percent
in Japanese television,
5 percent in Japanese music,
and 7 percent in the Japanese lifestyle.[39] Similarly,
a 200I Newsweek
poll found that where 65 percent of Americans found Japan
"admirable" and only 27 percent
thought the Japanese
"arrogant," a mere 34 percent of South Koreans found Japan
admirable and 59 percent considered the Japanese arrogant.[40]
Like Europe, Japan faces
serious demographic challenges.
By the middle of the twenty-first century Japan's population
could shrink by 30 percent unless it attracts I7 million immigrants, a difficult task in a
country that has been historically resistant to immigration. Moreover, the Japanese language
is not widely spoken, and Japan's English language
skills, according to
one journalist, rank "among the worst in Asia, making
it difficult to attract international talent to its universities."[41] A
recent Japanese prime minister's commission
on the nation's goals in the
twenty-first century called for a new
reinvention of Japan.[42]
Given the weakness of the political process, the need for further deregulation, the aging of the population, and the resistance to
immigration, such change will not be easy and may take more than a decade to
complete.[43] But given Japan's
past record of twice reinventing
itself-after the Meiji revolution in the nineteenth century and after World
War II-plus the undiminished skills of Japan's people, the stability of its society, areas of technological leadership (for instance,
mobile Internet applications), and manufacturing skills, it is not impossible.
A decade ago some observers thought the close
collaboration of government and industry in Japan would give it a lead in
soft power in the information age. Japan could develop an ability to
manipulate perceptions worldwide instantaneously and "destroy those that impede Japanese economic
prosperity and cultural
acceptance."[44] When Matsushita purchased the American motion
picture company MCA, its president
said that movies critical of
Japan would not be produced.[45]
Japanese media tried to
break into world markets, and the
government-owned NHK network began satellite broadcasts in English. The
venture failed, however,
as NHK's reports seemed to lag
behind those of commercial news
organizations, and the network had
to rely on CNN and ABC for
content.[46] This does not mean that Japan lacks
soft-power resources.[47]
But Japan's culture remains much
more inward-oriented than
that of the U.S., and its
government's unwillingness to deal
frankly with the history of
the 1930s continues to
limit its ability to
transform those resources
into soft power in the sense of
obtaining the policy outcomes it desires.
Further in the future,
China and India loom as
the giants of Asia, and there
are already signs of the expansion
of their soft-power resources. In 2000,
the Chinese novelist Gao Xingjian won China's first Nobel Prize for
literature, followed a year
later by the Indian diaspora
writer V. S. Naipaul. In June 1997, The New Yorker devoted an entire
issue to fiction by Indian writers. The Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became
the highest-grossing non-English-language film,
and Indian movies like
Monsoon Wedding were box-office successes in the U.S.48 Yao Ming, the Chinese star
of the National Basketball
Association's Houston Rockets,
could become another Michael Jordan,
and China is set to host the 2008
Summer Olympics. China's investment in manned space
flight also helps
to increase its prestige and attraction. Large expatriate communities
in the United States-z.4 million Chinese
and 1.7 million Indians have increased
interest in their home countries
among Americans. Moreover, the transnational connections in the
information industry are close, as U.S. high-tech companies increasingly
employ affiliates in Bangalore or Chennai to provide real-time services here.
But the real promise for China and India still lies in
the future. Rapid economic
growth is likely
to increase both countries' hard and soft power, but at this point,
neither country ranks high on the various
indices of potential soft-power resources that are
possessed by the United States,
Europe, and Japan. While
culture provides some soft power, domestic policies and values set limits,
particularly in China, where the
Communist Party fears allowing too much intellectual freedom
and resists outside
influences. Both countries have a reputation for major corruption in
government. India benefits from democratic politics, but still suffers
from overly bureaucratized government.
And the recent revival of Hindu extremism and the killing of Muslims in Gujarat has tarnished its democratic reputation. In
foreign policy as well, both countries' reputations are burdened with the
problems of longstanding conflicts,
over Taiwan and Kashmir, respectively.
Moreover, in the United States the attraction of an authoritarian China
is limited by the concern that it
could become a threat sometime in
the future. The soft power of Asian countries is likely to increase in the future, but at this stage they lag in soft-power
resources behind the United States and Europe.
Of course smaller countries both in Asia and other regions also enjoy soft power.
South Korea and Thailand attract others
through their economic and democratic progress. Thailand has even
discovered that foreigners love Thai food,
and its government set a goal of boosting the number of Thai restaurants overseas as a way to
"subtly help to deepen relations with other countries."[49] Soft
power is available to all
countries, and many invest in
ways to use soft-power resources to
"punch above their
weight" in international politics. As we saw
in chapter I, Norway has enhanced
its attractiveness by clever
policies even while
remaining outside the
EU. And for decades
the most trusted countries in Europe have been
the small countries of
Switzerland, Scandinavia, and the Benelux group.[50] For many countries, the constitutional ideas of Canada
"have been disproportionately influential, perhaps more influential
than those of the United
States."[51] South Africa is
widely admired for its progress in overcoming racial apartheid
peacefully, and Brazil projects a certain
attraction both from its vibrant
culture and its promise
in the future. Even
if they do not have the
overall power resources
to match the largest countries, smaller or less powerful countries still can present challenges greater than
their military size would imply. And not only states can pose such
challenges.
NONSTATE ACTORS
The information age has been marked by an increasingly
important role of nonstate actors on the
international stage. Private organizations increasingly cross national
boundaries. This is not totally new, but
the information revolution has led to a dramatic increase in scale in recent years, with the number of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) increasing from 6,000
to approximately 26,000 during the 1990S alone. And the numbers do not tell the full story, because they represent only
formally constituted organizations.[52]
Many non
governmental organizations
claim to act as a "global conscience"
representing broad public interests beyond the purview of individual states. They develop new norms
directly by pressing governments and business leaders
to change policies, and indirectly by
altering public perceptions
of what governments and
firms should be doing. In
terms of power resources,
these new groups rarely possess much hard power (although it is worth noting that the budget of
Greenpeace in 2001
was $157 million, compared
to the $90 million budget of
the intergovernmental World Trade
Organization). In any event, the
information revolution has greatly enhanced NGOs'
soft power.[53] Because
they are able
to attract followers, governments have to take NGOs into account as both allies
and adversaries. From
the American point of view, it is
worth noting that Brussels, London,
and Paris rank ahead of
Washington and New York as host
cities for international nongovernmental organizations.[54]
Not only the number
of transnational contacts but
also the number of types of
these organizations has
increased. A few decades ago,
large bureaucratic organizations with hefty budgets like multinational corporations or the
Roman Catholic church were the most typical type of transnational organization. The soft power
of corporate brand names has been
familiar for decades.
Such organizations remain important, but the reduced cost of communication in the Internet era has
opened the field to loosely structured
network organizations with little headquarters staff, and even to
individuals. This is part of the
democratization of technology that we
discussed in chapter 1. These
flexible nongovernmental
organizations and networks are
particularly effective in penetrating states without regard to borders.
Because they often involve citizens who are well placed in the domestic
politics of several countries, such networks are able
to focus the attention of the media and governments
on their issues. They create a
new type of transnational political
coalitions. For example, the
coalition to ban land mines
brought together NGOs, celebrities,
and politicians in many countries.
The information revolution makes states more porous.
Governments now have to share the stage with actors who can use information
to enhance their soft power and press
governments directly, or indirectly by
mobilizing their publics. Given the power of credible editors and cue
givers who can cut through the avalanche of available information in the
Internet age, a rough way to gauge
the increasing importance
of transnational organizations is
to look at the number of mentions
that these organizations receive
in mainstream media publications. By
this measure, the biggest NGOs
have become established players in the
battle for the attention of influential editors. For example, after Human Rights Watch released
its 2003 World Report, which
included strong criticism of
the U.S. government for its
conduct in the war on
terrorism, articles appeared
in 288 newspaper and magazines over the next ten days mentioning the organization.[55]
News coverage over the past decade has reflected the
growth of this general sector; the use of
the term "nongovernmental organization" or "NGO"
has increased 17-fold since 1992. Not only Human Rights Watch but also other
NGOs such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, Greenpeace,
Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), and Transparency International have undergone exponential
growth in the number of their mainstream media
mentions.
In the information age, governments that want to see rapid
economic growth find that they can no
longer maintain the barriers to information flows that historically protected officials from
outside scrutiny. Even large countries with hard power, such as
the United States, are affected.
For example, a campaign by NGOs
helped to scuttle a proposed
Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the late 1990S, and NGOs used the
Internet to plan the
disruption of the World Trade
Organization summit in
1999 that became known as the
"battle of Seattle."
The Pentagon opposed a treaty banning landmines, but a mixed
coalition of Internet-based organizations working with middle-power
governments such as Canada and individual
politicians and celebrities such as Princess Diana was able
to bring the treaty
into existence in
1997. Another example is
the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that was
ratified in May 2003 by the
192 members of the World Health
Organization. The United States
initially had strong
objections to the
treaty but dropped them in the face of
international criticism.[56]
A fascinating use
of the Internet to wield soft power
can be found in the politics of
diaspora communities. David Bollier,
an expert on the impact of digital
technologies, notes, "The
Internet has been a godsend to such populations because
it enables large numbers of geographically isolated people with a shared history to organize into large virtual
communities."[57] The Internet enables them to present attractive alternative
ideas to those back home. Internet connections between foreign
nationals and local
citizens helped to spark
protests in Beijing against
anti-Chinese riots taking place in Indonesia in
1998. The frustration of ethnic
Chinese living in Indonesia was transferred to Beijing with remarkable speed.
Similarly, in Zimbabwe, the Internet
was crucial in spreading news about government actions during disputed
elections.
One example of a
diaspora group that has
effectively used the Internet
and other media sources to affect political outcomes in its home
country is the Ghanaian expatriate
community. In the elections
of 2000, the first
real opportunity for Ghanaians to change their government through
democratic means, the diaspora network
was crucial in mobilizing support and money for the opposition candidate.
Online community networks such as the
Ghana Cybergroup (GCG), established in 1999 in New York, mobilized the
diaspora in the United States to
aggressively campaign for regime
change in Ghana. In 2000,
GCG members were
encouraged to "find
every means (email, phone,
etc) to communicate with their
families at home to
go out and vote" in
the national elections. And now
the GCG has refocused its mission on attracting development assistance for
Ghana, and is in the process of
establishing a network among the 2.5
million Ghanaian
expatriates to increase
the flow of capital
to their home country.[58]
Transnational corporations often are the
target of NGO activities such as campaigns to "name and
shame" companies that pay low wages to laborers in poor countries. Such
campaigns sometimes succeed because they can credibly threaten to
deprive the corporations of the soft power of their valuable global brand names. When
Shell proposed deep-ocean disposal of its Brent Spar drilling rig, which allegedly would have
polluted the ocean,
Greenpeace organized a boycott campaign that forced
Shell to opt for more costly dismantling on
shore. Ironically, when it was later disclosed that the original Shell proposal was better for
the environment, Greenpeace's reputation
and soft power suffered. In any event, Shell decided that it had
to increase its attention to NGOs:
the company also recently announced
that it would not drill in any spots designated UNESCO World Heritage sites. This decision came
two years after Shell acceded
to pressure from environmentalists and scrapped plans to drill in a World
Heritage site in Bangladesh.[59] Transnational drug companies were shamed
by NGOs into giving
up lawsuits in
South Africa in 2002
over infringements of their patents on AIDS
drugs because, the Financial
Times reported, "demands for
greater social responsibility
from business are getting louder, better organized and more popular."
Similar campaigns of naming and shaming have affected the
investment and employment
patterns of Mattel, Nike, and a host of
other companies.
NGOs vary enormously in
their organization,
budgets, the accountability to
their members, and their sense
of responsibility for he
accuracy of their claims. Their soft
power varies accordingly. While some NGOs are more credible
and trusted than governments, others are not. Overall,
a recent poll in Europe found that 42 percent
of Europeans tended to trust NGOs whereas 36 percent expressed distrust.
In Britain and Germany, however,
the number of those who
distrusted NGOs exceeded those
who trusted them.[60] Thus it is
hyperbole when activists call
such organizations "the world's other superpower," but at
the same time,
governments ignore them at
their peril. Some have reputations and
credibility that give them impressive
domestic as well
as international political clout. Others may lack
credibility among moderate
citizens, but have organizational and
communication skills that
allow them to mobilize demonstrations that governments cannot ignore. Few international meetings can be planned
today without consideration of the prospect of demonstrations. For better and for worse, NGOs and network organizations have soft-power
resources and do
not hesitate to use them.
For centuries,
organized religious
movements have possessed soft power. The Roman Catholic
church is organized
on a global scale, and many
Catholics around the world adhere to its
teachings on issues like
birth control and abortion
because of attraction, not coercion. Other religious organizations-among them Protestant, Islamic,
and Buddhist-have extensive missionary efforts that have attracted millions of people to adhere to their teachings,
particularly in Latin America and Africa in recent decades. But as we saw in the last chapter, intolerant
religious organizations can repel as well as attract. In
some circumstances aggressive
proselytizing can destroy rather than create soft power.
Intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations or the World Trade
Organization can also develop soft
power. Strictly speaking, they are the creatures of the states
that formed them, but the
diplomacy within different organizations takes on characteristics that
reflect the unique procedures and culture of the organization. Thus, for
example, the reputation of the United Nations cannot be understood
without contrasting the roles
of the General Assembly (with its rhetoric) and the Security Council (with its
vetoes), as well as the deference to regional caucuses that produces damaging aberrations such
as Libya's chairing
the Human Rights Commission. The
personality and skill of the
secretary-general can also affect the reputation of the organization. Like the
pope, Kofi Annan commands few
troops, but his popularity and position assure attention to his statements.
The UN is not the
only source of legitimacy in
world politics, but its universality, legal
framework, and relative
attractiveness do give its votes
and pronouncements a considerable degree
of legitimacy. The UN's
reputation, and thus its soft power, is susceptible to changing political
events. For example, the American decision to enter the Iraq War without a
second Security Council resolution hurt the UN's as well as America's reputation and led majorities in 19 of 21 countries polled to say that the UN was no
longer as important as it had
been in dealing with international conflicts.[61] On
the other hand, over two-thirds in
the U.S. and European
populations still rate the UN favorably
after the war.[62] The overall reputation of
the UN has fluctuated over the years. In Europe, post-Iraq War trust
in the UN is below the trust level of 2002, but it remains comparable to the 1990s.
In the United States,
overall favorable ratings for
the UN have rebounded to prewar levels after a brief dip. The UN's job
approval rating in the United States was actually lower in the 1980s than
before the Iraq War (28 percent in
August 1985; 38 percent in March 2003) and hit its historic low during the Korean War
(23 percent in May 1951).[63] The
attractiveness and soft-power resources of the UN vary over time and have limits,
but governments cannot afford to ignore it without paying a price.
Soft power can also adhere to malevolent organizations and
networks. Soft power depends on a receptive audience even if the eye of the beholder
is evil. Transnational terrorist organizations like AI Qaeda may be repulsive
to the majority of the
world, but they are clearly
attractive to some extremists. If
the Soviet Union and Communism presented the most dangerous soft-power
challenges to the United States in the Cold War era, today's greatest challenge comes from radical
Islamist ideology and
organizations. In particular, the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect,
which originated on
the Arabian peninsula in the eighteenth century, has been augmented by
radical outgrowths of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which arose in Egypt in the 1920S. Ironically, Sayyid
Quttb, a key intellectual figure for
radical Islamists, was a Muslim Brother who lived
for a short time
in the United States and was
disgusted by what he considered the meaninglessness of American life.[64]
As noted before, culture that is attractive to many can be repulsive to some.
The rise of
radical Islamism received
a good deal of state help from Saudi Arabia, where the
ruling family agreed to propagate Wahhabism as a means of propitiating the clerics, thus buying
"their own political legitimacy at the cost of stability elsewhere."[65] Because funding of Wahhabist institutions comes
from both Saudi government
ministries and private charities, it
is virtually impossible to estimate the total spending. One expert testified
to Congress that the Saudis had spent
roughly $70 billion on aid projects since the 1970s, and others
report that they sponsored
1,500 mosques and 2,000 schools worldwide from
Indonesia to France.[66] These
institutions often displace more moderate and worse-funded institutions promulgating moderate
interpretations of Islam.[67] Even if
these numbers are
incorrect, a fraction
of the dollar figures
still dwarfs what the United
States has spent on public diplomacy in the Muslim world.
Ironically, the
soft power of Wahhabism has not proved
to be a resource that the Saudi
government could control or use
to obtain favorable outcomes.
Instead, it has been like a sorcerer's apprentice that has come
back to bedevil
its original creator. The radicals regard the royal family as corrupt and in
league with Western infidels. They aim
to overthrow or disrupt the
government, and launched
terrorist attacks
in Riyadh in 2003. The
royal family's bargain with the Wahhabist clerics has
backfired because the soft power of Islamic radicalism has
flowed in the direction of Osama bin Laden and his goal of overthrowing the
Saudi government, not in the direction of making the Saudi government more
secure.
A snapshot of this
situation was captured by a
poll taken in a number of predominantly Muslim
countries shortly after the
Iraq War. Pluralities in Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan,
Morocco, and the Palestinian Authority said they had
a lot or some confidence
in Osama bin Laden to do
the right thing regarding
world affairs. In those
same countries, vast majorities
had more confidence in bin Laden than in George W. Bush or Tony
Blair. Although it is not surprising that many Muslims had negative feelings
about Bush and Blair in the aftermath of a war against a Muslim
country, the fact that bin Laden inspired confidence
sent a clear message to Americans
about the soft power of its sworn
enemy. Similar anecdotal evidence
abounded in the
fall of 2001 in
the aftermath of 9/11, when reports
came from Africa that "Osama" was now a popular name for baby boys,
and from Pakistan, where bin Laden T-shirts were selling well. In part this may be a new twist in the long
tradition of Robin Hood legends among the poor and disenfranchised, but it
also represents deeper trends in
Islamic opinion. Because the war on terrorism
involves a civil war
between radicals and moderates within Islamic civilization, the
soft power of the Islamists
is a disturbing symptom and
a warning of the need for
Americans and others
to find better ways of projecting soft power to strengthen the moderates. Moderate
churches and synagogues can play a role with moderate Muslims. In all three religions the prophet Abraham
is a revered figure, and so
the idea of an Abrahamic dialogue
among Muslims, Christians, and
Jews may be an example of the
ways that nongovernmental actors can exercise their soft power and create
bridges of understanding.
THE UNITED STATES
is the world's only military
superpower. It also remains the world's mightiest country in terms of
economic and soft power,
but America is not nearly as dominant in these two domains of power as in the military domain. The trends
of the information age and the spread of
democratization should benefit American soft power
in the future,
but they will also benefit Europe and other countries that are
able to adapt to the new conditions.
More problematically, the trends of the information age will increase the
soft power of nonstate
actors, both good and
bad. To cope with a world in which the soft power of others is increasing, the United States
will have to
invest more in its own
soft-power resources, and learn
to wield its soft power more effectively.
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