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Walk Softly, But Carry a Big Stick (interview with Nye) by Jennifer Barrett 
Walk Softly, But Carry a Big Stick In his new book, Joseph Nye argues that the United States needs to rely less on its military might and more on 'soft power' tactics WEB EXCLUSIVE By Jennifer Barrett Newsweek Updated: 12:30 p.m. ET April 08, 2004April 8 - Has the United States become too confident in its ability to go it alone? In his new book "Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics" (Public Affairs), which hit stores this week, Joseph S. Nye argues that it's time the world's sole superpower reassess its unilateralist policies. There's no question that America has more military might than other nations - just look at the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the fall (and capture) of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But Nye, who is dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration, argues that wielding such "hard power" is not enough. By going ahead with the war in Iraq without the backing of the United Nations, for example, the United States alienated many of its allies and is now left bearing much of the burden of occupation and reconstruction a year after the war started. By neglecting to use its "soft power" - focusing more on diplomatic efforts and on achieving the cooperation of allies - Nye warns that the United States risks not only losing popularity among allies, but losing ground in its war against terrorism. NEWSWEEK's Jennifer Barrett spoke with Nye about the importance of soft power and how it can help the United States achieve its goals. Excerpts. NEWSWEEK: Could you define soft power for our readers? Joseph S. Nye: It's the ability to get what you want by attracting others rather than coercing them. If power is the ability to influence others to get what you want, there are three ways to do it: with threats (or sticks), with payments (or carrots) or by attraction and co-option - and that is soft power. You write that the Bush administration is effective when it comes to hard power, but not soft power. Why? There are some people in the administration that have been called the "new unilateralists" who argue the United States is so strong that there is no country that can balance our military power and, therefore, we can do what we want and others have no choice but to follow. The trouble with that is that we do have preponderant military power but we often need the help of others to deal with issues like terrorism and other transnational issues. Acting in a manner that appeared arrogant to others and did not attract them when we entered Iraq did not prevent us from going to war and winning quickly, but it did prevent others from helping us after we had won. That means we are now bearing the burdens largely on our own. Over 90 percent of the troops in Iraq are Americans. There are a lot of flags, as someone put it, but not so many troops. I read a piece in which you wrote that we should challenge the new conventional wisdom that America is invincible, and that the "new unilateralism" should guide U.S. foreign policy. Do you really think we view ourselves as invincible - especially after 9/11? The attitude we see among new unilateralists is that we can use our military power alone to solve these problems. But what we have found is that our military power is very effective, but it is not sufficient. Take Afghanistan. Our military did an excellent job of defeating the Taliban government, which had provided havens for Al Qaeda terrorists, but the military wrapped up less than one-quarter of Al Qaeda. And the only way you can wrap up a transnational terror network is through close cooperation - like intelligence sharing, police work across borders, tracing financial flows, and so forth - with other countries. But isn't it in their best interest to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism? While other countries cooperate in part out of their own self-interest, the degree of cooperation depends on how attractive the United States is & Al Qaeda is a network of cells in 50 to 60 countries and you can't bomb cells in Hamburg or Birmingham or Detroit. We have to be able to attract others to cooperate with us, and that requires an attitude of cooperation on our part. And we need to do a better job of explaining our positions. After the cold war, the United States cut back dramatically on the resources we pour into broadcasting and exchange programs and so forth. We now spend only about a billion dollars a year on that public diplomacy, which is no more than Britain spends yet Britain is one fifth our size. Or, another way to put it is that we spend 400 times more on delivering bombs through our military budget than we do on delivering ideas through our public diplomacy. In your book, you write that "it would be a mistake to dismiss the recent decline in our attractiveness so lightly." Yes, anti-Americanism has risen quite sharply over the last year or two. When people are asked why, they say it is because of American foreign policy not American culture. We lost on average 30 points per country in attractiveness among European countries, but the situation was even worse in the Islamic world. For example, in Indonesia, in 2000, three quarters of the people thought the United States was attractive and by May of 2003 that had dropped to 15 percent. And this is the largest Islamic country in the world and one where we need help in combating Jemaah Islamiah, which is an offshoot of Al Qaeda. But the U.S. has been unpopular in the past then recovered. What's different this time? One difference is that in the past there was a Soviet Union, which was a common enemy or "greater evil," if you want. The United States was very unattractive because of our policies in the Vietnam War, but we recovered from that partly because we changed the policies and ended the Vietnam War and partly because there was a concern about the Soviet Union. Today, obviously, there is no Soviet Union and no country or coalition that is capable of balancing American military power. That makes it all the more important that we use our preponderant hard power in a way that is humble and sensitive to the interests of others. President Bush put it well in 2000, during the election campaign, when he said that if we are a humble country, others will respect us and if we are arrogant, they will not. Unfortunately, many in his administration failed to follow that advice. How could the U.S. used its soft power more effectively before the Iraqi invasion? If you look at the example of President Bush's father in 1990 and 1991, of being more patient and of building a broad coalition, we might have been able to have escaped some of the opprobrium that accompanied the way we went about the Iraq war. But the feeling many countries had was that we had already made up our mind and that we were impatient. Many felt that if we had taken another month or six months last year, it would have been possible to build a broader coalition. How much damage was done by the decision to push forward with an attack on Iraq without a U.N. resolution - or the support of many of our Western allies? A fair amount of damage was done. We had a fairly broad coalition for the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and that began to fall apart as we refocused on Saddam Hussein and Iraq and claimed that was part of the war on terrorism. Do you think there will come a time when Western European allies agree that attacking Iraq was the right thing to do - weapons of mass destruction or not? It's a little early to draw the balance sheet on the Iraq war. Getting rid of a tyrant was a gain, but the fact that the war led to our loss of soft power and helped Al Qaeda to recruit throughout the Islamic world was a loss. If Iraq is a stable democracy five years from now, we might say that all in all the gains outweighed the costs. But after the first year, the assessment suggests the costs are greater than the gains. If you were asked to join the administration of the president elected this November, what changes would you make to U.S. foreign policy? I think we'll have to change the substance and style of policies to be more consultative with the interests of other countries and we also have to change our investment in public diplomacy - our ability to explain our policies to others. The substance and the style of policy and the presentation or selling of policies need improvement. © 2004 Newsweek, Inc. |