The Soft Power Hoax | Consortiumnews

The Soft Power Hoax | Consortiumnews

The Soft Power Hoax

U.S. officials love the idea of “soft power,” a concept that applies
non-violent means – from propaganda to culture – to induce foreign
countries to conform to Washington’s wishes. But the arrogance of the
approach has alienated, rather than attracted, many people around the
world, writes Mike Lofgren.

By Mike Lofgren

A
recurrent buzz phrase of the Washington mandarinate in the last two
decades has been “soft power.” The term was coined by Joseph Nye, a
Harvard academic, in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power.
What he meant by the term is that “when one country gets other
countries to want what it wants [it] might be called co-optive or soft
power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to
do what it wants.”

Soft power he defined as the putatively
attractive political, social and cultural traits of a country that
induce admiration in a target people, and, presumably, a desire both to
emulate those traits and to willingly comply with the wishes of the
country projecting the soft power.

 

Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013,
about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept.
11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)