Soft power

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Soft power is the ability to obtain what one wants through co-option and attraction. It can be
contrasted with 'hard power', that is the use of coercion and payment. Soft power can be wielded
not just by states, but by all actors in international politics, such as NGOs or international
institutions.[1] The idea of attraction as a form of power dates back to ancient Chinese
philosophers such as Laozi in the 7th century BC.

Soft power is comparable to the second dimension (agenda setting) and the third dimensions (or
the radical dimension) of power as expounded by Steven Lukes in «Power: A Radical View».[2]

Contents
[hide]

 1 Origin
 2 What makes soft power soft?
 3 Role of educational and cultural institutions
 4 Limitations to soft power
 5 Measuring soft power
 6 Academic debates around soft power
 7 References
 8 External links
 9 Further reading

[edit] Origin
The phrase was coined by Joseph Nye of Harvard University in a 1990 book, Bound to Lead:
The Changing Nature of American Power. He further developed the concept in his 2004 book,
Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. The term is now widely used in
international affairs by analysts and statesmen. For example, in 2007, Chinese President Hu
Jintao told the 17th Communist Party Congress that China needed to increase its soft power, and
the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke of the need to enhance American soft power by
"a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy,
strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and
development." In 2010 Annette Lu, former vice-president of Taiwan, visited South Korea and
advocated Taiwan's use of soft power as a model for the resolution of international conflicts.[3]
[edit] What makes soft power soft?
The primary currencies of soft power are an actor's values, culture, policies and institutions—and
the extent to which these "primary currencies", as Nye calls them, are able to attract or repel
other actors to "want what you want."[4] In 2008, Nye applied the concepts of hard and soft
power to individual leadership in "The Powers to Lead".

In any discussion of power, it is important to distinguish behavior (affecting others to obtain the
preferred outcomes) from the resources that may (or may not) produce those outcomes.
Sometimes people or countries with more power resources are not able to get the outcomes they
wish. Power is a relationship between an agent and a subject of power, and that relationship will
vary with different situations. Meaningful statements about power must always specify the
context in which the resources may (or may not) be converted into behavior.

Soft power is not merely non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods, as this
confuses the resources that may produce behavior with the behavior itself – what Steven Lukes
calls the “vehicle fallacy.” Neither is it the case that all non-military actions are forms of soft
power, as certain non-military actions, such as economic sanctions, are clearly intended to coerce
and are thus a form of hard power.

That said, military force can sometimes contribute to soft power. Dictators like Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Stalin cultivated myths of invincibility and inevitability to structure expectations and
attract others to join them. A well run military can be a source of attraction, and military to
military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks
that enhance a country’s soft power. Napoleon I's image as a Great General and military hero
arguably attracted much of the foreign aristocracy to him. The impressive job of the American
military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian
earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Of course, misuse of
military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviet Union had a great deal of soft power
in the years after World War II, but they destroyed it by the way they used their hard power
against Hungary and Czechoslovakia, just as American military actions in the Middle East
undercut their Soft Power.

[edit] Role of educational and cultural institutions

The foundation of educational and cultural institutions by American missionaries and educators
played a critical part in the development of American soft power in the Edwardian era. Some
think-tanks such as the CEE Council have argued that early 20th century progressive US
academics such as Reverend James Augustin Brown Scherer and Rabbi Judah Magnes were
contrarian thinkers who foresaw the eventual decline of European colonialism in the Middle-East
and Asia and the correlated rise of America- notably through the development of US institutions
of higher learning abroad. [5]

[edit] Limitations to soft power

Soft power is not the solution to all problems. Efforts to use soft power got nowhere in attracting
the Taliban government away from its support for Al Qaeda in the 1990s, but other goals such as
the promotion of democracy and human rights are better achieved by soft power.

Soft power has been criticized as being ineffective by authors such as Niall Ferguson in the
preface to Colossus. Neorealist and other rationalist and neorationalist authors (with the
exception of Stephen Walt) would generally disregard soft power since they assume for
theoretical purposes that actors in international relations respond to only two types of incentives -
economic incentives and force.

As a concept, it is often hard to distinguish between the effects of soft power and other factors.
For example, Janice Bially Mattern asserts that America's use of the phrase "you are either with
us or against us" was an exercise in soft power, since no explicit threat was included. However,
rationalist authors would merely see this as an 'implied threat', and that direct economic or
military sanctions would likely follow from being 'against us'.

[edit] Measuring soft power

Soft power, then, represents the third behavioral way of getting the outcomes you want. Soft
power is contrasted with hard power, which has historically been the predominant realist
measure of national power, through quantitative metrics such as population size, concrete
military assets, or a nation's gross domestic product. But having such resources does not always
produce the desired outcomes as the United States discovered in the Vietnam War. The extent of
attraction can be measured by public opinion polls, by elite interviews, and case studies. Nye
argues that soft power is more than influence, since influence can also rest on the hard power of
threats or payments. And soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by
argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to attract, and attraction often
leads to acquiescence.

In international affairs, soft power is generated only in part by what the government does through
its policies and public diplomacy. The generation of soft power is also affected in positive (and
negative) ways by a host of non-state actors within and outside the country. Those actors affect
both the general public and governing elites in other countries, and create an enabling or
disabling environment for government policies. In some cases, soft power will enhance the
probability of other elites adopting policies that allow one to achieve preferred outcomes. In
other cases, where being seen as friendly to another country is seen as a local political kiss of
death, the decline or absence of soft power will prevent a government from obtaining particular
goals. But even in such instances, the interactions of civil societies and non-state actors may help
to further general milieu goals such as democracy, liberty, and development. Soft power is not
the possession of any one country or actor.

The success of soft power heavily depends on the actor’s reputation within the international
community, as well as the flow of information between actors. Thus, soft power is often
associated with the rise of globalization and neoliberal international relations theory. Popular
culture and media is regularly identified as a source of soft power, as is the spread of a national
language, or a particular set of normative structures; a nation with a large amount of soft power
and the good will that engenders it inspire others to acculturate, avoiding the need for expensive
hard power expenditures.

Because soft power has appeared as an alternative to raw power politics, it is often embraced by
ethically-minded scholars and policymakers. But soft power is a descriptive rather than a
normative concept. Like any form of power, it can be wielded for good or bad purposes. Hitler,
Stalin, Mao Zedong and Osama bin Laden possessed a great deal of soft power in the eyes of
their acolytes, but that did not make it good. While soft power can be used with bad intentions
and wreak horrible consequences, it does differ in terms of means. It is on this dimension that
one might construct a normative preference for greater use of soft power.

[edit] Academic debates around soft power

Academics have engaged in several debates around soft power. These have included:

 Its usefulness (Niall Ferguson, Josef Joffe, Robert Kagan, Ken Waltz, Mearsheimer vs
Nye, Katzenstein, Janice Bially Mattern, Jacques Hymans, Alexander Vuving, Jan
Mellisen)
 Whether soft power can be coercive/manipulative, (Janice BIally Mattern, Katzenstein,
Duvall & Barnet vs Nye, Vuving)
 How the relationship between structure and agency work (Hymans vs Nye)
 Whether Soft Balancing is occurring (Wohlforth & Brooks vs Walt et al)

[edit] References
1. ^ Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
2. ^ Power: A Radical View, Steven Lukes
3. ^ Soft power lets Taiwan overcome poverty, survive despotism: Lu, Taiwan News, February 18,
2010
4. ^ Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics pp31
5. ^ (English) Turkey's Ascendancy, the Russification of Israel & the Future of the Middle-East,
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Turkey-s-Ascendancy-the-R-by-M-Nicolas-Firzli-100616-
463.html, retrieved 2010-06-15

[edit] External links

 Barack Obama & the use of soft power
 Global Power Barometer
 Is China’s new communications worldview coming of age? David Bandurski
 The Benefits of Soft Power
 Simulation and Soft Power
 Soft Power definition
 Soft Power, Smart Power and Intelligent Power A lecture in honor of Joseph Nye
[edit] Further reading
 Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives, ed Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, Routledge, 2010
 Steven Lukes, "Power and the battle for hearts and minds: on the bluntness of soft
power," in Felix Berenskoetter and M.J. Williams, eds. Power in World Politics,
Routledge, 2007
 Janice Bially Mattern, "Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft," in Berenskoetter and Williams
 J.S. Nye, "Notes for a soft power research agenda," in Berenskoetter and Williams
 Young Nam Cho and Jong Ho Jeong, "China's Soft Power," Asia Survey,48,3,pp 453–72
 Yashushi Watanabe and David McConnell, eds, Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and
National Assets of Japan and the United States, London, M E Sharpe, 2008
 Ingrid d'Hooghe, "Into High Gear: China’s Public Diplomacy’, The Hague Journal of
Diplomacy, No. 3 (2008), pp. 37–61.
 Ingrid d'Hooghe, "The Rise of China’s Public Diplomacy", Clingendael Diplomacy Paper
No. 12, The Hague, Clingendael Institute, July 2007, ISBN 978-90-5031-1175,36 pp.
 "Playing soft or hard cop," The Economist, January 19, 2006
 Y. Fan, (2008) "Soft power: the power of attraction or confusion”, Place Branding and
Public Diplomacy, 4:2, available at http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/1594
 Bruce Jentleson, "Principles: The Coming of a Democratic Century?" from American
Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century
 Jan Melissen, "Wielding Soft Power," Clingendael Diplomacy Papers, No 2, Clingendael,
Netherlands, 2005
 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, "Soft Power in East Asia" June 2008
 Joseph Nye, The Powers to Lead, NY Oxford University Press, 2008
 Nye, Joseph, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics
 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the
World (Yale University Press, 2007). Analysis of China's use of soft power to gain
influence in the world's political arena.
 John McCormick The European Superpower (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Argues that
the European Union has used soft power effectively to emerge as an alternative and as a
competitor to the heavy reliance of the US on hard power.
 Matthew Fraser, Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire (St.
Martin's Press, 2005). Analysis is focused on the pop culture aspect of soft power, such as
movies, television, pop music, Disneyland, and American fast-food brands including
Coca-Cola and McDonald's.

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United Nations

India's Edge Over China: Soft Power

In the struggle to win support around Asia, India's openness
gives the country a big advantage compared with China,
columnist John Lee writes
By John Lee

Asia
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While China's neighbors look at the country's rise with a mixture of apprehension and
admiration, the story of India's reemergence as a regional power is more attractive to many states
in the region. After all, unlike China, India has no history of invasion or domination in East and
Southeast Asia and does not have competing claims in the South China Sea with other Asian
states. Moreover, "in today's world," India's then-Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi
Tharoor said in a speech last November, "it is not the size of the army that wins but the country
that tells the better story." As the world's largest democracy, with a vibrant press and thriving
entertainment industry, India has huge soft power advantages over China and its state-controlled
media. The implication is India can take advantage of that goodwill as Asia's two giants battle
for influence in the region and around the world.

Tharoor is correct to refer to India's soft-power advantages. But goodwill towards India and the
enormous potential of Indian soft power—the ability to influence the behavior of other states
through attraction and cooptation rather than military force or economic inducement—does not
arise simply from the growing popularity of Bollywood movies or the fact that Indian contestants
(along with those from Venezuela) have won more Miss World contests than any other country.
The fact that one likes Indian culture may not necessarily lead foreign governments to accede
and acquiesce to Indian foreign policy objectives.

Instead, power—soft or hard—needs to be understood within the context of how attractiveness

and influence in the region is acquired and wielded. The regional order over the past two decades
has been characterized by a move toward open markets, multinational cooperation, international
rule-of-law, and an evolving democratic community—all backed by American preeminence and
Washington's security alliances and partnerships with key capitals, such as Tokyo, Seoul,
Canberra, Singapore, Manila and Bangkok. The enduring preference of all key states (with the
exception of China) is to maintain the existing order vis-à-vis newly reemerging powers such as
China and India.

Strategically Comfortable

That India is rising through full and unapologetic participation in the American-led regional
order works to its advantage. Although India is not looking to become an American ally, New
Delhi is fundamentally satisfied with the existing strategic order. As Singapore's Foreign
Minister George Yeo puts it in an interview with The Hindu newspaper in January 2007, "We
see India's presence as being a beneficial and beneficent one to all of us in Southeast Asia."
Moreover, India was already a robust democratic country that has remained intact despite still-
open wounds from decades of disastrous socialist economic policies. That allows the country to
leverage what Professor Michael Mandelbaum of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies calls "democratic exemplarism"—a paradigm emerging from the successful
examples of not just the U.S. but the evolving liberal democracies in East and Southeast Asia.

In particular, Indian politics and society are well aligned with regional standards of what
constitutes a modern and legitimate social and political system. Unlike the intolerance of
political pluralism in China, India's domestic habits of negotiation and compromise from 60
years of robust democracy offer greater reassurance to other states that these virtues will be
carried over in New Delhi's interaction with other capitals.

Not Much Apprehension

Therefore, in addition to being impressed with India's recently acquired hard-power abilities
(such as its naval fleet of almost 60 surface ships), plus an economy that has been growing at a
rate of 7 percent to 8 percent for almost two decades, political and strategic elites increasingly
see India as a predictable, stabilizing, cooperative, and attractive rising power.

The Benefits of Soft Power

8/2/2004
"Leaders have to make crucial choices about the types of power that they use," says Joseph S.
Nye Jr., until recently the dean of Harvard's Kennedy School. Here's how to choose.
by Joseph S. Nye Jr.

It is a central paradox of American power: The sheer might of the United States is unquestioned:
U.S. troops are stationed in some 130 countries around the globe, and no opposing army would
dare to challenge it on a level playing field. But as America's military superiority has increased,
its ability to persuade is at low ebb in many parts of the world, even among its oldest allies. In
the following remarks, drawn from an address given on March 11 at the Center for Public
Leadership's conference on "Misuses of Power: Causes and Corrections," Joseph S. Nye Jr.,
Dean [until June 30, 2004] of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government,
distinguishes between hard power—the power to coerce—and soft—the power to attract.

The dictionary says that leadership means going ahead or showing the way. To lead is to help a
group define and achieve a common purpose. There are various types and levels of leadership,
but all have in common a relationship with followers. Thus leadership and power are inextricably
intertwined. I will argue below that many leadership skills such as creating a vision,
communicating it, attracting and choosing able people, delegating, and forming coalitions
depend upon what I call soft power. But first we should ask, what is power?

What is power?
At the most general level, power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the
outcomes one wants. There are several ways to affect the behavior of others.

 You can coerce them with threats.

 You can induce them with payments.
 Or you can attract or co-opt them.

Sometimes I can affect your behavior without commanding it. If you believe that my objectives
are legitimate, I may be able to persuade you without using threats or inducements. For example,
loyal Catholics may follow the Pope's teaching on capital punishment not because of a threat of
excommunication, but out of respect for his moral authority. Or some radical Muslims may be
attracted to support Osama bin Laden's actions not because of payments or threats, but because
they believe in the legitimacy of his objectives.

Practical politicians and ordinary people often simply define power as the possession of
capabilities or resources that can influence outcomes. Someone who has authority, wealth, or an
attractive personality is called powerful. In international politics, by this second definition, we
consider a country powerful if it has a relatively large population, territory, natural resources,
economic strength, military force, and social stability.

The virtue of this second definition is that it makes power appear more concrete, measurable, and
predictable. Power in this sense is like holding the high cards in a card game. But when people
define power as synonymous with the resources that produce it, they sometimes encounter the
paradox that those most endowed with power do not always get the outcomes they want. For
example, in terms of resources, the United States was the world's only superpower in 2001, but it
failed to prevent September 11. Converting resources into realized power in the sense of
obtaining desired outcomes requires well-designed strategies and skillful leadership. Yet
strategies are often inadequate and leaders frequently misjudge—witness Hitler in 1941 or
Saddam Hussein in 1990.

Soft power rests on the ability to shape the Measuring power in terms of resources is an
preferences of others. imperfect but useful shorthand. It is equally important
to understand which resources provide the best basis
for power behavior in a particular context. Oil was
not an impressive power resource before the industrial age, nor was uranium significant before
the nuclear age. Power resources cannot be judged without knowing the context. In some
situations those who hold high office, command force, or possess wealth are not the most
powerful. That is what revolutions are about.

Soft power
Everyone is familiar with hard power. We know that military and economic might often get
others to change their position. Hard power can rest on inducements ("carrots") or threats
("sticks"). But sometimes you can get the outcomes you want without tangible threats or payoffs.
The indirect way to get what you want has sometimes been called "the second face of power." A
country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries admire its
values, emulate its example, aspire to its level of prosperity and openness. This soft power—
getting others to want the outcomes that you want—co-opts people rather than coerces them.

Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others. In the business world, smart
executives know that leadership is not just a matter of issuing commands, but also involves
leading by example and attracting others to do what you want. Similarly, contemporary practices
of community-based policing rely on making the police sufficiently friendly and attractive that a
community wants to help them achieve shared objectives.

Political leaders have long understood the power that comes from attraction. If I can get you to
want to do what I want, then I do not have to use carrots or sticks to make you do it. Soft power
is a staple of daily democratic politics. The ability to establish preferences tends to be associated
with intangible assets such as an attractive personality, culture, political values and institutions,
and policies that are seen as legitimate or having moral authority. If a leader represents values
that others want to follow, it will cost less to lead.

Soft power is not merely the same as influence. After all, influence can also rest on the hard
power of threats or payments. And soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move
people by argument, though that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to attract, and
attraction often leads to acquiescence. Simply put, in behavioral terms, soft power is attractive
power. Soft power resources are the assets that produce such attraction.

If I am persuaded to go along with your purposes without any explicit threat or exchange taking
place—in short, if my behavior is determined by an observable but intangible attraction—soft
power is at work. Soft power uses a different type of currency—not force, not money—to
engender cooperation. It uses an attraction to shared values, and the justness and duty of
contributing to the achievement of those values.

The interplay between hard and soft power

Hard and soft power are related because they are both aspects of the ability to achieve one's
purpose by affecting the behavior of others. The distinction between them is one of degree, both
in the nature of the behavior and in the tangibility of the resources. Command power—the ability
to change what others do—can rest on coercion or inducement. Co-optive power—the ability to
shape what others want—can rest on the attractiveness of one's culture and values or the ability
to manipulate the agenda of political choices in a manner that makes others fail to express some
preferences because they seem to be too unrealistic.

The types of behavior between command and co-option range along a spectrum from coercion to
economic inducement to agenda-setting to pure attraction. Soft power resources tend to be
associated with the co-optive end of the spectrum of behavior, whereas hard power resources are
usually associated with command behavior. Hard and soft power sometimes reinforce and
sometimes interfere with each other. A leader who courts popularity may be loath to exercise
hard power when he should, but a leader who throws his weight around without regard to the
effects on his soft power may find others placing obstacles in the way of his hard power.

The limits of soft power

Some skeptics object to the idea of soft power because they think of power narrowly in terms of
commands or active control. In their view, imitation or attraction do not add up to power. Some
imitation or attraction does not produce much power over policy outcomes, and neither does
imitation always produce desirable outcomes. For example, armies frequently imitate and
therefore nullify the successful tactics of their opponents and make it more difficult for them to
achieve the outcomes they want. But attraction often does allow you to get what you want. The
skeptics who want to define power only as deliberate acts of command and control are ignoring
the second or "structural" face of power—the ability to get the outcomes you want without
having to force people to change their behavior through threats or payments.

At the same time, it is important to specify the conditions under which attraction is more likely to
lead to desired outcomes, and those when it will not. All power depends on context—who relates
to whom under what circumstances—but soft power depends more than hard power upon the
existence of willing interpreters and receivers. Moreover, attraction often has a diffuse effect of
creating general influence, rather than producing an easily observable specific action. Just as
money can be invested, politicians speak of storing up political capital to be drawn upon in
future circumstances.

Of course, such goodwill may not ultimately be honored, and diffuse reciprocity is less tangible
than an immediate exchange. Nonetheless, the indirect effects of attraction and a diffuse
influence can make a significant difference in obtaining favorable outcomes in bargaining
situations. Otherwise leaders would insist only on immediate payoffs and specific reciprocity,
and we know that is not always the way they behave.

Soft power is also likely to be more important when power is dispersed. A dictator cannot be
totally indifferent to the views of the people under his rule, but he can often ignore popularity
when he calculates his interests. In settings where opinions matter, leaders have less leeway to
adopt tactics and strike deals. Thus it was impossible for the Turkish government to permit the
transport of American troops across the country in 2003, because American policies had greatly
reduced our popularity there. In contrast, it was far easier for the United States to obtain the use
of bases in authoritarian Uzbekistan for operations in Afghanistan.

The information revolution

The conditions for projecting soft power have transformed dramatically in recent years. The
information revolution and globalization are transforming and shrinking the world. At the
beginning of the 21st century, those two forces have enhanced American power. But with time,
technology will spread to other countries and peoples, and America's relative preeminence will
diminish.

Not all hard power actions promptly Even more important, the information revolution is
produce desired outcomes. creating virtual communities and networks that cut
across national borders. Transnational corporations
and nongovernmental actors will play larger roles. Many of those organizations will have soft
power of their own as they attract citizens into coalitions that cut across national boundaries.
Political leadership becomes in part a competition for attractiveness, legitimacy, and credibility.
The ability to share information—and to be believed—becomes an important source of attraction
and power.

This political game in a global information age suggests that the relative role of soft power to
hard power will likely increase. The most likely gainers in an information age will have:

 multiple channels of communication that help to frame issues,

 cultural customs and ideas that are close to prevailing global norms,
 and credibility that is enhanced by values and policies.

Soft power resources are difficult to control. Many of its crucial resources are outside the control
of governments, and their effects depend heavily on acceptance by the receiving audiences.
Moreover, soft power resources often work indirectly by shaping the environment for policy, and
sometimes take years to produce the desired outcomes.

Of course, these differences are matters of degree. Not all hard power actions promptly produce
desired outcomes—witness the length and ultimate failure of the Vietnam War, or the fact that
economic sanctions have historically failed to produce their intended outcomes in more than half
the cases where they were tried. But generally, soft power resources are slower, more diffuse,
and more cumbersome to wield than hard power resources.

Information is power, and today a much larger part of the world's population has access to that
power. Technological advances have led to dramatic reduction in the cost of processing and
transmitting information. The result is an explosion of information, and that has produced a
"paradox of plenty." When people are overwhelmed with the volume of information confronting
them, it is hard to know what to focus on. Attention rather than information becomes the scarce
resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from background clutter gain
power. Editors and cue-givers become more in demand.

Among editors and cue-givers, credibility is an important source of soft power. Politics has
become a contest of competitive credibility. The world of traditional power politics is typically
about whose military or economy wins. Politics in an information age may ultimately be about
whose story wins.

Reputation has always mattered in political leadership, but the role of credibility becomes an
even more important power resource because of the paradox of plenty. Information that appears
to be propaganda may not only be scorned; it may also turn out to be counterproductive if it
undermines a reputation for credibility. Under the new conditions more than ever, the soft sell
may prove more effective than a hard sell.

Finally, power in an information age will come not just from strong hard power, but from strong
sharing. In an information age, such sharing not only enhances the ability of others to cooperate
with us but also increases their inclination to do so. As we share with others, we develop
common outlooks and approaches that improve our ability to deal with the new challenges.
Power flows from that attraction. Dismissing the importance of attraction as merely ephemeral
popularity ignores key insights from new theories of leadership as well as the new realities of the
information age.

Conclusion
Soft power has always been a key element of leadership. The power to attract—to get others to
want what you want, to frame the issues, to set the agenda—has its roots in thousands of years of
human experience. Skillful leaders have always understood that attractiveness stems from
credibility and legitimacy. Power has never flowed solely from the barrel of a gun; even the most
brutal dictators have relied on attraction as well as fear.

When the United States paid insufficient attention to issues of legitimacy and credibility in the
way it went about its policy on Iraq, polls showed a dramatic drop in American soft power. That
did not prevent the United States from entering Iraq, but it meant that it had to pay higher costs
in the blood and treasure than would otherwise have been the case. Similarly, if Yasser Arafat
had chosen the soft power model of Gandhi or Martin Luther King rather than the hard power of
terrorism, he could have attracted moderate Israelis and would have a Palestinian state by now. I
said at the start that leadership is inextricably intertwined with power. Leaders have to make
crucial choices about the types of power that they use. Woe be to followers of those leaders who
ignore or devalue the significance of soft power.

Reproduced with permission from "Soft Power and Leadership," Compass: A Journal of
Leadership, Spring 2004. Compass is published by the Center for Public Leadership, John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

For more information on Compass, write to cpl@ksg.harvard.edu.

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Joseph S. Nye Jr. is the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard