Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
When will the Bush administration realize that US popularity abroad matters? By Joseph S Nye 
Lonely at the top America's popularity abroad continues to slide. When will the Bush administration realize that it matters? By Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Boston Globe, 3/28/2004 THE MARCH 11 TERRORIST bombings in Spain show that the threat of terrorism remains dire. Removing Saddam Hussein from power did not reduce that threat, and intelligence agencies warn that it has in fact increased Al Qaeda's ability to recruit. At the same time, the Iraq war has proven costly to America's ability to attract others to our larger cause. The Bush administration has properly identified terrorism as the central focus of our foreign policy, but has been much less successful in choosing the most effective means to combat it. The administration understands hard military power, but it has largely failed to combine it with equally important soft power -- the ability to get the outcomes we want by attracting others rather than coercing or paying them. Despite initial outpourings of sympathy following 9/11, anti-Americanism has increased sharply over the past two years, with serious consequences for American foreign policy. A survey released two weeks ago by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows that the damage to our reputation has only worsened since the Iraq war. When asked in an earlier Pew poll to what extent the United States "takes your interests into account," a majority in 20 out of 42 countries surveyed said "not too much" or "not at all." We are squandering our soft power. Skeptics say not to worry -- popularity is ephemeral and should not guide foreign policy in any case. The United States is so strong, we can act without the world's applause or even approval. Foreigners may grumble, yet they have little choice but to follow. We do not need permanent allies and institutions. We can always pick up a coalition of the willing when we need to. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is wont to say, the issues should determine the coalitions, not vice versa. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the recent decline in our soft power so lightly. It is true that the United States has recovered from unpopular policies in the past, as in the years following the Vietnam War. But that was during the Cold War, when other countries still feared the Soviet Union as the greater evil. And failure to attend to our soft power can undercut our hard military power. For example, a year ago when the United States wanted to send Iraq-bound troops across Turkey, the Turkish parliament -- mindful of overwhelming public opposition to the war -- would not allow it. Similarly, the widespread perception that we were determined to go to war in Iraq regardless of the views of other countries meant we had to shoulder more of the burden of policing and reconstructing Iraq after the war -- a burden that will only increase should the newly elected Spanish government pull out of Iraq prematurely, and if other allies follow suit. . . . Complicating this situation is the fact that the American public -- and the administration -- is torn between competing foreign policy traditions which have differing, even conflicting, conceptions of soft power and its importance. The historian Walter Russell Mead identifies these strains in his 2001 book "Special Providence."" Hamiltonians," named after Alexander Hamilton, are realists who cautiously pursue national interest and commerce. The Hamiltonians are prudent, but their realism lacks a moral appeal to many at home and abroad. Populists, who emphasize self-reliance and frequent use of coercion, are named for Andrew Jackson. Though robust and tough, "Jacksonians" lack staying power and allies. "Jeffersonians" are those who pursue democracy by being a shining beacon to others rather than, in the words of John Quincy Adams, "going forth in search of dragons to destroy," while "Wilsonians" are the idealists who follow Woodrow Wilson in seeking to make the world safe for democracy, by force if necessary. None of these groups on their own quite gets the balance right. Both Hamiltonians and Jacksonians are deficient in soft power. The Jeffersonians have plenty of soft power, but not enough hard power. The Wilsonians are also long on soft power, though their idealism sometimes leads them into unrealistic attempts to transform the international situation. In the case of the Middle East, for years the United States followed a Hamiltonian policy that sought stability through support of autocrats, but in the end did not prevent the rise of radical Islamist ideology and terrorism. The Wilsonians urge a transformational rather than a conservative or status quo foreign policy. In their view, without democratization, the Middle East (and other regions) will continue to be a breeding ground of rogue states and terrorist threats. Much of the debate inside the Bush administration over the Iraq war was between traditional Hamiltonian realists (like Secretary of State Colin Powell) and a coalition of Jacksonians (like Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney) plus neoconservative Wilsonians (like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz). Part of the confusion over American objectives in going to war, for which it is now paying a political price, was that the administration combined different arguments that appealed to each camp. The suggestion of a connection to Al Qaeda and 9/11 was important to Jacksonians who sought revenge and deterrence; the argument that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction appealed to Hamiltonians (and traditional Wilsonians in the Congress); and the need to remove a bloody dictator and transform Middle Eastern politics was important to the neoconservative Wilsonians. These new Wilsonians understand soft power, but do not fully understand its dimensions. While grasping the importance of democracy as a source of American legitimacy, the neoconservatives, unlike traditional Wilsonians (Wilson, recall, was a Democrat who proposed the League of Nations), spurn the role of the UN and other international institutions. Yet ironically, the only way to achieve the type of transformation that the neoconservatives seek is by working with others and avoiding the backlash that arises when the United States appears to be a unilateral imperial power. What's more, since democracy cannot be imposed by force and requires considerable time to take root, the most likely way to obtain long-term commitment to democratization projects from the American public is through the development of international legitimacy and the sharing of burdens with allies and institutions. For Jacksonians like Donald Rumsfeld, this kind of staying power may not matter. "I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct the country," Rumsfeld remarked about Iraq in September 2003. A Jacksonian populist prefers to punish the dictator and come home rather than engage in tedious nation-building. But for serious neoconservatives, like Paul Wolfowitz, an impatience with institutions and allies may undercut their own objectives. . . . As Europeans continue to feel the aftershocks of the events in Madrid, we Americans are still working our way through the aftermath of our own national trauma. We are groping for a path through the strange new landscape created by technology and globalization whose dark aspects were vividly illuminated on Sept. 11, 2001. The administration, torn between different approaches to the terrorist threat and the broader challenges of the Middle East, has experienced a mixture of success and failure. We have been more successful in the domain of hard power, where we have invested more, trained more, and have a clearer idea of what we are doing. We have been less successful in the areas of soft power, where our public diplomacy has been woefully inadequate, our expenditures have been a relative pittance, and our neglect of allies and institutions has created a sense of illegitimacy that has greatly diminished our attractiveness to the rest of the world. It does not have to be this way. Soft power was central to our power for more than half a century -- in the decades following World War II, we built some of the longest-lasting alliances and institutions that the modern world has seen. In addition, the United States is at the forefront of the information revolution, with a vibrant social and cultural life that provides an almost infinite number of points of contact with other societies. During the Cold War, we demonstrated that we know how to use the soft power resources that our society produces. It is time now for us to draw upon and combine our traditions in a different way than we have in the past few years. We need more of Jefferson and less of Jackson. Our Wilsonians are correct about the importance of the democratic transformation of world politics over the long term, but they need to remember the role of institutions and allies. They also need to temper their impatience with a good mixture of Hamiltonian realism. In short, America's success in combating terrorism will depend upon a deeper understanding of the role of soft power in our foreign policy, and the development of a better balance of hard power and soft. When we have achieved that, we will be a smart power. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., dean of Harvard's Kennedy School, is author of the new book "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics" (PublicAffairs), from which portions of this essay are adapted. |