THE CHANGING NATURE OF POWER

A Resume of “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”; Joseph S. Nye, 2004

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Winning hearts and minds has always been important, even more in a global information age. Information, nowadays is power, and modern information technology is spreading information more widely than ever before. Yet, political leaders have spent little time thingking about how the nature of power has changed and how information altered as weapon and also as a part of an strategies for wielding power.

Power is like the weather. Everyone depends on it and talks about it, but few understand it. Power is also like love, easier to experience than to define, but no less real for that. Some people think of power narrowly, in terms of command and coercion. but, when we measure power in terms of the chenged behaviour of others, we have to know first their preferences. Otherwise we may be a mistaken about our power as a rooster who thinks his crowing makes the sun rise. Power always depends on the context in which the relationship exists.  When people define power as synonymous with the resources that poduce it, they sometimes encounter the paradox that those best endowed with power do not always get the outcomes they want.

Power resources are not as fungible as money. What wins in one game may not help at all in another. Having power resources does not guarantee that you will always get the outcome you want. 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.

In early periods, international power resource may have been easier to assess. A traditional test of a Great Power in international politics was “strength for war”. But over centuries, as technologies evolved, the sources of strength for war often changed. Power resources cannot be judged without knowing the context. “before you judge who is holding the high cards, you need to understand what game you are playing and how the value of the cards may be changing”. The distribution of power resources in the contemporary information age varies greatly on different issues. The agenda of world politics has become like a three-dimensional chess game in which one can win only by playing vertically as well as horizontally. Yet many political leaders still focus almost entirely on military assets and classical military solutions. They mistake the necessary for the sufficient. They are one-dimensional players in a three-dimensional game. In long term, that is the way to lose, since obtaining favorable outcomes on the bottom transnational board often requires the use of soft power assets.

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 or threats. But sometimes you can get the outcomes you want wthout tangible threats or payoffs. 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.

Political leaders have long understood the power taht comes from attraction. If i can get you to want to do whta i want, then i do not have to use carrots or sticks to make you do it. Whereas leaders in authoritarian countries can use coercion and issue commands, those in democracies have to rely more on a combination of inducement and attraction. Soft power is a staple of daily democratics. Soft power is not merely the same as influence. After all, influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. Soft power is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though that is an important part of it. In terms of resources, soft-power resources are the assets that produce such attraction.

One way to think about the difference between hard and soft power is to consider the variety of ways you can obtain the outcomes you want. If hard power using cammand by threatening with force or economic sanctions. Soft power uses a different type of currency to engender cooperation-an attraction to shared values and the justness and duty of contributing to the achievement of those values. But, hard and soft power are related becouse they are both aspects of the ability to achieve one’s purpose by affecting the behaviour of others. The distinction between them is one of degree, both in the nature of the behaviour and in the tangibility of the resources. Command power, the ability to change what others do, can rest on coercion or inducement. Soft power resources tend to be associated with co-optive end of the spectrum of behaviour, whereas hard power resources are usually associated with command behaviour. In international politics, the resources that produce soft power arise in large part from the values an organization or country expresses in its culture, in the examples it sets by its internal practises and policies, and in the way it handles its relations with others.

The soft poewr of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture, its political values, and its foreign policies. When a country’s culture includes universal values and its policies promote values and interests that others share, it increases the probability of obtaining its desired outcomes because of the relationships of attraction and duty that it creates. Narrow values an parochial cultures are less likely to produce soft power. Popolar culture is often a resource that produces soft power, but the effectiveness of any power resource depends on the context. Government policies can reinforce or squander a country’s soft power. Domestic or foreign policies that appear to be hypocritical, arrogant, indifferent to the opinion of others, or based on a narrow approach to national interests can undermine soft power. The values a government champions in its behaviour at home, in international institutions, and in foreign policy strongly affect the preferences of others. Governments can attract or repel others by the influence of their example. But soft power does not belong to the government in the same degree that hard power does.

Hard and soft power sometimes reinforce and interfere with each other. A country that courts popularity may be loath to exercise its hard power when it should, but a country that throws its weight around without regard to the effects on its soft power may find others placing obstacles in the way of its hard power. No country likes to feel manipulated, even by soft power. Government policies can reinforce or squander a country’s soft power. Domestic or foreign policies that appear to be hypocritical, arroant, indifferent to the opinion of others, or based on narrow approach to national interests can undermine soft power. All power depends on context, who relates to whomunder what circumstances, but soft power depends more than hard power upon the existence of willing interpreters and recieveres. Soft power also likely to be more important when power is dispersed in another country rather than concentrated.

In twentieth century, science and technology added dramatic new dimensions to power resources. The age of super-powers had begun. The ability to use information technology to create pecision weapons, real time intelligence, broad surveillance of regional battlefields, and improve command and control allowed the US to surge ahead as the world’s only military superpower.