Sunday, April 01, 2007
Britain learns the limitations of "soft power"
It is fashionable in Europe and on the American left to claim that the United States under George W. Bush does not understand and has therefore dissipated America's "soft power," by which they mean its ability to influence global actors through moral leadership and the setting of examples. Hawkish as I am with regard to the Islamist insurgency, I tend to agree with that indictment as far as it goes -- we have to recognize that many countries in the world are democracies or otherwise heavily influenced by their domestic public opinion, and we hurt ourselves and help our enemies when we don't.
However, one gets the feeling that many advocates of "soft power" are really opponents of "hard power," and wish to the point of belief that soft power can substitute entirely for hard. In the best essay I have read all week, Victor Davis Hanson explains with great eloquence how this attitude among Europeans led directly to the newest Iranian hostage crisis, and why it will eventually result in Europe having no power of any sort. Read the whole thing.
Finally, some of you might observe that massive American hard power did not prevent the Iranians from holding Americans hostage for 444 days back in 1978-1980. True enough, but that occurred during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who is surely a greater advocate and practitioner of "soft power" than any other president in American history. Hard power, after all, is not comprised entirely of military assets. It also requires the will to use them.
5 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Sun Apr 01, 12:05:00 PM:
Maybe they'll learn a different perspective on these things when their OWN personnel are the ones at risk.
By Escort81, at
Sun Apr 01, 07:12:00 PM:
VDH'S closing paragraph appears to be an obit for all non-U.S. Western military force:
"Quite simply, there is now no NATO, no EU, no U.N. that can or will do anything in anyone’s hour of need."
France and the U.K are still nuclear powers (although there is some debate within the U.K. as to whether it will remain so), so at least from the standpoint of non-conventional forces, Hanson's statement isn't completely accurate, though I beleive he meant in the context of a situation that might arise that was well below a nuclear threshold.
It's understandable that Europeans want very little to do with any military responsibilities beyond their borders (or even at the edges of their borders, as happened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s), following a century with two World Wars and a Cold War that decimated its populations, countryside and economies, and divided its peoples (in the case of Germany and the CW). The preceding centuries were not exactly a walk in the park, either. Given a choice between eternal vigilance on one hand and exhaustion and relative pacifism and non-intervention on the other, is it hard to see why Europe would choose the latter?
Military power, and the will to use it at the right time, is important. Soft power is important -- having societies that are open, technologically astute, productive and can compete economically in a world market that has vastly different labor costs, will have more to do with the quality of life in a European country than the size of its navy.
The question is, can you have only soft power over the long run without some external force trying to impose its will upon you?
And when something happens in another part of the world happens that you really object to on moral grounds (say, Darfur, or Rwanda), what can you do -- what capacity do you have -- in the short run to directly change the situation and save lives?
Progressives in Europe and the U.S. were willing to take up arms in the 1930s in Spain to oppose facism. Would that same willingness exist today?
By 
, at
Sun Apr 01, 07:57:00 PM:
Well since england no longer punishes crinimals and since they have disarmed their citizens and let young thugs rule the streets thats no surprise i mean WINSTON CHUCHILL,RICHARD THE LIONHEART and ADMERAL HARATIO NELSON must be spinning in their graves
By , at
Sun Apr 01, 10:08:00 PM:
As a long-term resident of the US, I recently went back to visit the mother country and was bombarded with the usual talking points - George Bush is an idiot, he lied, he's sucking England into his war of choice, Blair is his poodle, etc etc.
I hate to say it, but I'm so exhausted by this European superciliousness that I'm tempted to wish that the US sit back for a while and let the Brit's/Europeans struggle in this mire themselves for a little while.
Yes, it's true that Blair has been an exceptional friend to the US, but the British people don't feel that way.
They truly feel that negotiation will solve everything, and that you don't need a big visible stick in your back pocket.
Better some serious humiliation now and a serious reassessment of the value of the EU and the UN, than a more painful reckoning later
By , at
Tue Apr 03, 12:12:00 AM:
The EUROWEENIE UNION its become so oathetic and its ashame whats become of a once powerful group of seperate independent nations and look out the evil CFR wants to do the same to america STOP THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION
