According to Professor Joseph Nye, Soft Power “is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want.” In other words, Soft Power is the ability to exert influence on others in order to get them to behave in an “acceptable” way. It can easily be said to be a form of conditioning akin to that of Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning, where an organism is rewarded for behaving “acceptably” in response to presented stimuli.

In retrospect, Soft Power, in the context in which it was coined (International Relations), means the ability to influence other states to follow their lead and or act in conformity in the achievement of the objective of the influencing state. Loosely said, Soft Power is co-option and tantamount to making a state desire what under normal circumstances that state would or may not desire. It also comes with the added benefit of cutting cost (both human and financial), since diplomacy is the main political tool on the table.

Hard Power, on the other hand, is the direct opposite of Soft Power. It is a “theory that describes using military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies.” Thus, Hard Power is the ability of a state to influence another state’s behavior solely by the use of force; it is the absolute use of sticks to elicit a desired behavior. It is the conventional means of settling disputes among nations and it belongs to the school of realism in International Relations with its basic assumption that dispute settlement always has to be a zero sum-win situation.  The only means to this end is through the exercise of a state’s military might; the belief is that if you don’t act, your adversaries would consider you to be weak.  In such circumstances, thought is not given to unforeseen consequences.  The main aim is to use force to subdue a state to make it comply with the dictates of the other, irrespective of what repercussions the use of force may bring.

Of these two powers, Hard Power is the most visible and it is the one that poses the greatest threat to international peace and stability. For Hard Power to be used, a state does not have to be a major player on the geopolitical scene; all that state needs is to have some amount of military accoutrement and unleash untold suffering on the citizens of another state so as to make the state on whom pain is inflicted to act in a way acceptable to the inflicting state. Iran and North Korea are considered a threat to the peace not because they are powerful nations but because their desire to amass military power and the perceived reckless use of such military power will pose enormous threat to peace loving people of the West. Soft Power, on the other hand, is more potent and time consuming of the two; it calls for the use of words to convince and to avoid the use of conventional force so loved by realist.

The question that needs to be answered now is which of these powers produce the best results?  

The use of force has been around since biblical times; when Pharaoh wouldn’t listen to Moses, God used force so he would listen. During the Milian Dialog of 416 B.C. between the Athenians and the Milos, Athens realized its use of force on the Milos did not produce the intended outcome.  The Maccabean Guerrilla War Fare (165-63 BC),   the 30-year War (1618-1648) which led to the balkanization of Germany and the restructuring of the powers that be in Europe (Peace of Westphalia), and the First and Second World Wars are also good examples of instances where a state or a group of states have used force either to emancipate itself from political oblivion or to expand its sphere of influence.

In our modern political environment, powerful nations have made it a point to exert influence at all cost; sometimes with good intentions. During the early 90s, the first state aggression of significant proportion was that of Iraq on Kuwait.  The result of that action was a barrage of Western military might descending on Iraq like a torpedo and the subsequent economic torture that led to the death of innocent Iraqis. In this instance, we acknowledge that both sides suffered human and financial cost of differing degrees.  For Iraq, both military personnel and ordinary citizens died and the national economy suffered dearly.  For the U.S and friends, on the other hand, only a few military personnel died but tax payers paid for the actions of their government.  In all these instances, the force exerted on Iraq did not stop Saddam Hussein from the political buffoonery that had him on “cloud 9”. As a matter of fact it provided him the impetus to be more defiant.

Then, there was “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia in 1993. At the time, Mohamed Farrah Aididand and his fellow rebels were confiscating relief materials meant for Somalis stranded by the internal conflict (Internal Displaced Persons). Under a UN “umbrella”, the United States went into Somalia to ensure that relief materials reached intended targets; a move that achieved great success. The success of this undertaking resulted in a mission creep on the part of the U.S., as it decided to go outside of its UN mandate to become a peace enforcer. This turned out to be the worst military calculation of the time and within a few hours, the U.S. lost 18 marines.  And to add insult to injury, the body of a dead marine was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu which seemed to amaze and amuse Aidid sympathizers.

The result of Black Hawk Down was the abrupt withdrawal of U.S. marines from a region that it had supplied over $6 billion worth of military aid during the 60s and 70s. Three months after the U.S. withdrawal, and coupled with the senseless and irresponsible hegemonic ambitions of France, Hutu militias turned on their fellow Tutsi neighbors and massacred about 800,000 Rwandans within about a hundred-day period. The lesson from this is that the use of military power is not a sine qua num to achieving peace, because when the greatest military of our time suffered humiliation at the hands of a few military quacks, it withdrew, turning a deaf ear to the cries of Tutsis and their sympathizers, resulting in the slaughter of innocent Tutsis and their Hutu friends (The Rwandan Genocide). 

There is also the now infamous and monotonous military action on Iraq. Being that Iraq has now become a chewing stick, less attention will be paid to its intricacies. On the other hand, reference is being made only to highlight the effect of the use of force. As much as I will like to stay away from the American political and social quibbling of whether it was wise to go to war, I am more interested in using the outcome of the use of Hard Power. The use of military power did remove Saddam and his cronies form power but for six years now, but have we been able to achieve our intended goal? If the goal was to get Saddam ousted and ensure democratic elections, then bravo, mission accomplished. But on the flip side, if the goal was to achieve economic, political, social and cultural freedom, then a bad job has been done due to the fact that Iraq is worst off now than it was under Saddam. There has actually been a school of thought that says it will take another Saddam for Iraq to be peaceful which is a subject on its own .

Now let's turn our attention to the use of Soft Power. Currently Soft Power is use sparingly when it comes to critical international issues, arguably because I believe we live in a Hobbesian world (a term coined by Hans J. Morgenthau) - full of realists with their assumption that “force is the ultima ratio - the final and legitimate arbiter of dispute among states.” In the presidential campaign of 1991, President Clinton campaigned on the issue of using military force in the former Yugoslavia but didn’t do so until his second term, when thousands of lives had already been lost. Upon coming into office, President Clinton decided to use diplomacy to solve the Yugoslavian conflict even though Milosevic was on a calculated, meticulous, and or premeditated path of cleansing non-Serb Yugoslavs. Force was only used when the death toll went up and all indications were clear that Milosevic and friends were going nowhere unless forced to. In essence, the use of force only came after diplomacy (Soft Power) had failed. Thus, in this instance, Soft Power was the first option considered.

One other classical example of the use of Soft Power was the dispute between the U.S. and Libya. Libya had been in the bad books of the United States since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan AM flight 747 by Libyan operatives. Initially the U.S. applied its Hard Power of economic embargo and its “call to worship”, labeling Libya a state sponsor of terrorist and had Libya on its “Axis of Evil” list. No U.S. government would talk with Libya unless it gave up those implicated in the Lockerbie bombing. Tensions ran high and the belief was that, at times military action was considered on Libya.

After being at Libya’s throat for a long time with no change in Libya’s behavior, and Libya also realizing that being isolated from the free world was not the best of option, both sides apparently had a change of mind or heart - both made away with their “school of hard knock” stand and resorted to the drawing board and began talking. Fortunately or unfortunately, a deal was reached in December 2003; Libya agreed to give up the suspected masterminds of the Lockerbie bombing and to pay monetary compensation to the families of the victims. On the part of the U.S., Libya was no more to be regarded as a state sponsor of terror, no more to be tagged as an “Axis of Evil” and to welcome Libya into the community of “peace loving nations”. 

In the same way, after the entire verbal rumble in the Korean peninsula and the flexing of military muscles between the U.S. and North Korea, diplomacy led to a deal being made - not the threat to use force or economic embargos. North Korea had been on the receiving end of U.S. wrath since the Korean War for its communist inclination. In spite of all the punishment received by North Korea at the hands of the Western world, the country still remains closed, its leader epitomizes all that is popular and keeps pursuing its nuclear ambitions. Things began changing with regards to Pyongyang’s attitude towards the West only when diplomacy was intensified through the six-nation talks. The end result was Pyongyang’s promise in mid October 2008 to dismantle its nuclear facilities (although I must point out that this is not the first time we’ve heard such promises).

As per the above discussion, it is crystal clear that although the application of a state’s Hard Power can be decisive and sharp, it does not always provide the answers that are needed to maintain peace on the international scene. Hard Power radicalizes those on whom it is used, hardens their heart and in the long run leads to hatred for those who used such power. On the other hand, however slow and time consuming it takes Soft Power to produce results, it more often does the magic and leads to good results. Diplomacy brings all parties to the table for quality deliberations; according all parties the necessary recognition and respect needed to reach an amicable solution. Agreed solutions in most, if not all cases, lead to a long period of calm and relative peace. It also provides ownership to the solution and carries with it the issue of accountability and responsibility in ensuring the successful implementation of those solutions. At the end of the day, it does us a great deal of good to be diplomatic in state-by-state interactions and win friends, than to use force and win enemies.

The author holds a Masters Degree in Global Affairs from New York University. He could be reached by email at oasante@yahoo.co.uk, oa318@nyu.edu