The wind, the sun, and Soft Power

[imomus]

Some call it "the battle for hearts and minds", some call it Soft Power, others just use words like "influence". Whatever it is, "the world's sole superpower" seems to be losing it. A BBC poll this week found that "anti-Americanism is on the rise, and the more the US flexes its hard power -- the more it deploys troops abroad or talks tough diplomatically -- the more it seems to weaken its ability to influence the world."

Some other BBC polls paint a more general picture of the context. Yes, America is currently unpopular top dog. But not for long. By 2026, China will be the world's number one economy, with the US at number 2, Japan at number 3, and India in fourth place. America's current wars are the snaps and snarls of a slipping power. And attempts to pre-empt this fall -- remember the "new American century"? -- have only accelerated it.

"Is it simply the Bush administration's foreign policy or the whole image of America that is unpopular?", the latest BBC article asks. "Comparable surveys suggest that there is still strong support around the world for the values enshrined in US society. But it looks as though America itself is seen to be living up to those values less and less. As a result, America's soft power - its ability to influence people in other countries by the force of example and by the perceived legitimacy of its policies - is weakening."

This week even the US legislature seemed to grasp this. They moved to block Bush's plan to send 20,000 new troops to Iraq. Meanwhile, military figures seemed to want to soften their own image. A new heat (but not death) ray was unveiled, a machine that sits on the back of a humvee and literally projects "soft hard power" by blasting a very hot -- but harmless -- ray at people protesting America's presence in their land. When the ray hits you, it feels like you're on fire. But you don't die. You can still run away, live to fight another day. The ray gun can't work miracles, though. It can't make you love the people who fire it at you.

"Non-lethal weapons are important for the escalation of force, especially in the environments our forces are operating in," says Marine Col Kirk Hymes, director of the development programme, in the BBC article about the ray gun. "The weapon could potentially be used for dispersing hostile crowds in conflict zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan. It would mean that troops could take effective steps to move people along without resorting to measures such as rubber bullets - bridging the gap between shouting and shooting."

"Bridging" is a rather poor choice of word. A bridge takes you from one place to another -- from shouting to shooting. Didn't the colonel mean "blocking" or "delaying" that transition? And shouldn't he have said that non-lethal weapons "de-escalate" rather than "escalate" force? Unless... the non-lethality is just there to allow you to reach for the trigger quicker. When you don't speak the language of the nation you're occupying, shouting is a waste of breath.

When soldiers do try to use Soft Power-type language, they end up saying ridiculous stuff. Last year Major General William Caldwell, the chief US military spokesman in Iraq, told journalists in Baghdad's fortified green zone that Iraq was "a work of art in progress":

"Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture. Blobs of paint become paintings which inspire." Is force, too, cultural? Are we sculpting and painting with flesh and blood? Tough love indeed, General Michaelangelo.



"It may be better for a prince to be feared than loved," says the Wikipedia article on Soft Power, quoting Machiavelli, "but the prince is in greatest danger when he is hated. There is no contradiction between realism and soft power. Soft power is not a form of idealism or liberalism. It is simply a form of power, one way of getting desired outcomes. Legitimacy is a power reality."

Personally, I think Aesop was a more astute political observer than Machiavelli. His fable "The Wind and the Sun" goes like this:

"The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin." So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on."

"Kindness," concludes Aesop, "effects more than severity."

Comments

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

when you need a jeep mounted microwave pain system to spread your values, then it's definitely time to look at the values.

[(Anonymous)]

Quote of the day.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< when you need a jeep mounted microwave pain system to spread your values, then it's definitely time to look at the values. >>

I am so stealing this.

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

"when you need a jeep mounted microwave pain system to spread your values, then it's definitely time to look at the values."

Yeah, that liberal, multicultural democracy, "not exploding yourself to kill your neighbor the garbage man" crap; what a waste of time.

[(Anonymous)]

NOT the quote of the day.

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

i'm not so sure you can get away with that "we're nobly fighting irrational evil" stuff any more. weird that it took so long in many ways.

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

"I'm not so sure you can get away with that "we're nobly fighting irrational evil" stuff any more. "

Oh? You think blowing up the garbageman because he works for the infidel invader is rational evil or something? I'm not trying to "get away" with anything; just observing. Pardon me if my world view doesn't reduce to things which fit on a bumper sticker.

Other cultures don't invent the microwave pain generator because they'd just as soon shoot people who disagree with them.

look at what you're saying

[(Anonymous)]

That's disingenuous. The "liberal multicultural democracy" things is the myth of american values. You can measure values by what your ideals are, but most of the world measures them by judging the motivation of your actions. And when you are roasting protesters in order to maintain your hedgemony, most people would judge your motivations as less-than-liberal. Now, a lot of the american liberal values are still evident if we look at internal affairs, but the international picture is quite different. If we are interpreting values to mean ideals we can say that most middle eastern nations are peaceful to the point of self-sacrifice (and if you haven't read the Koran and the life of Muhammad, you should) and Japanese revere the natural environment and take pleasure in the character their appliances gain as they age (wabi-sabi). Finally, an american pointing out that other nations and peoples are violent is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Re: look at what you're saying

[(Anonymous)]

What you are talking about there is really the difference between interpretation and intention. America soaks a giant canvas in blood, thinking "freedom" and the world sees it and goes "eeww, gross."

Let's not let politics distract us from our high-art pitter-patter.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

However, there's an unfortunate tendency among the very broad left to look at American actions in, say, Iraq and decide it's a unified "Americans vs. everyone else" situation. First of all it's intellectually dishonest. Second of all the idea of "us vs. them" reinforces the political thinking that was popular among serious Conservatives only a few years ago - namely that the insurgency is some sort of unified and centrally led war out there against American occupation (and, indirectly, that it can be militarily won.)

Re: look at what you're saying

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Japanese revere the natural environment and take pleasure in the character their appliances gain as they age (wabi-sabi)

Which Japan are you talking about? I wasn't aware such a Japan existed...there is a Japan out there that pays good lip service to these ideals, but ruins their natural environments with public works projects (and kickbacks to politicians) and the constant consumption of cars, gas and consumer goods.

umm...

[(Anonymous)]

I think that was my point exactly.
That what a culture claims as it's values and what it's actual values as revealed by it's actions are two entirely different things.
It would be a shame if "liberal democratic values" lost their appeal just because they were mistakenly confused for "economic imperialism" due to the disconnect between america's words and deeds.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Our values are: We would rather hurt you for a second or two than kill you and everyone related to you like you would do if the situation were reversed.


How is a non-lethal technology bad for crowd control?

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/14/60minutes/main2359119_page2.shtml

BUSH: I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The Bush administration's plan was absolutely beautiful on paper. Its failure is not only that they committed too few troops. It was doomed because it was based on a fundamental misconception - that there is something like an "Iraq" out there distinct from whatever strongmen are bossing the various factions around.

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

mmmm me and my mates and most of the people in my street and - whining aside - country are pretty reasonable people, but i still don't fancy our chances much without an infrastructure. perhaps you are a visionary leader of men who can create social order by the force of personality alone while all around you is mired in self-interested chaos.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

My point is that neither George W. Bush or Nūrī al-Mālikī are such leaders.

The current Iraqi government, the thinking goes, needs a considerable army and they need it quickly. Then the Americans can theoretically stop doing Saddam's job and let them do Saddam's job instead. That's fair enough, but the problem is that the Americans need to pick the exact factions to play against the others so that the country won't fall into anarchy or Iranian control. That is in no way easy.

[dr--ben.livejournal.com]

well, as a general rule, i don't think you can ever do anything, anywhere, in a warzone, or a council estate, or an art scene, to artificially create a community, or a society, in that kind of top down way.

what you can do is cautiously remove the mitigating factors against communities naturally forming, and wait for them to form spontaneously.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Yes, certainly. But waiting for communities to naturally form isn't really possible for either America... or many Iraqi.

Even if such communities eventually do form, there needs to be an effective monopoly of violence in place. It would be nice if it would be a broadly speaking legitimate and recognised monopoly, but the first priority for getting some of the infrastructure back on line is that there's such a monopoly.

The Bush experiment was based on the assumption that they could set up a multipartisan government that could broker a somewhat stable deal between groups and set that monopoly up. They completely underestimated the balkanisation that's rife in Iraq and the degree to which they could help to quell it. (After two wars and the UN trade sanctions, their moral authority among the relevant, i.e. armed, factions is obviously pretty limited.)

Brokering such a peace would undoubtedly be preferable to (most) everyone, but it entails that the brokering system can itself negotiate from a position of strength. That takes - metaphorically speaking - a great deal of guns, not American guns but their own guns, and that's where the current experiment's weak point is. Why listen to the central government if the loyalty of the actual policeman around the corner might be somewhere else?

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I agree that it was beautiful on paper, but the skeptics (myself included) warned about more than sectarian conflicts and civil war. They pointed out that occupancies, no matter how well-intentioned, almost never succeed. Japan and Germany were exceptions, and we had leveled both countries to the ground, and both countries were completely war-weary (the fire bombings in both countries killed millions and leveled Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo). Also, both countries had incredibly top down hierarchies and a populace that was tired.

However, most occupancies go very badly. Think of the French occupancies of Spain at the turn of the 18th c., or France's occupation of Algeria, or Portugal's occupation of Mozambique, or England's occupation of India, or Japan's occupation of S. Indo-China, or our occupation of Vietnam, etc. Occupations only work when the timing is perfect (like post-WWII) OR when the occupiers are ruthless (like early Rome or the Mongols).

Lastly, there could have been an 'Iraq' out there, but we'll never know because we bungled the thing so hopelessly that there was never a moment to find out. We left a power vacuum, and the people that filled the gap used the sectarian fault lines to further their power. Now we have created a civil war.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Exactly. You, sir/madam, have formulated my thoughts very well. (Though I would raise some arguments against the spread of Rome being based on sheer ruthlessness.)

What remains to be seen now is whether or not this final Bush gamble succeeds in taming that civil war down to such a level that the central government can finally start acting like the 800 pound gorilla it was supposed to be.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I would argue that the Romans and the Mongols gave people the option to join or die. If they joined, they really did recieve an improvement in living, and they became part of the Roman or Mongolian Empire. If they refused, they were obliterated. Some Scottish or Irish guy was quoted by one of the Roman historians as saying something like, "The Romans kill everyone and call it peace."

In order to win, we'd have to turn really nasty, and our populace (thankfully) will never tolerate it.

I'd say...

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

The odds are about the same as me winning The Booker Prize next year. That is, not impossible, but no thinking person should bet on it.