Smart Power 101

WARNING: There will be a test
Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay in the second bed, but it was too soft. Then she lay down in the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep.
That’s beds. Now let’s consider power that’s not too hard, not too soft. It’s just right. What do we call it? Call it Goldilocks power? No, that won’t sell in Peoria. The new in crowd knows what to call it — ‘smart power.’
Here’s Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State, in her opening statement at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural—picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy. This is not a radical idea. The ancient Roman poet Terence declared that “in every endeavor, the seemly course for wise men is to try persuasion first.”

Where did smart power come from? “Smart Power” was the title of an article written by Susan Nossel in a 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine in reclaiming liberal internationalism from its mis-use by the necons to justify muscle-flexing militarism and arrogant unilateralism. Progressives must reclaim the legacy of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy with a foreign policy that will both bolster U.S. power and unite the world behind it.

Progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism, which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war. Washington, the theory goes, should thus offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military — to advance a broad array of goals: self-determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

What about the bogus ‘war on terror’?

Progressives must therefore advance a foreign policy that renders more effective the fight against terrorism but that also goes well beyond it — focusing on the smart use of power to promote U.S. interests through a stable grid of allies, institutions, and norms. They must define an agenda that marshals all available sources of power and then apply it in bold yet practical ways to counter threats and capture opportunities. Such an approach would reassure an uneasy American public, unite a fractious government bureaucracy, and rally the world behind U.S. goals.

Will the rest of the world buy this? Nossel again:

Much of the world still buys into the ideals of liberal internationalism. According to the July 2003 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, even in Muslim countries such as Lebanon, Morocco, and Pakistan, most people believe that Western-style democracy could work well for them.

What do we do about these invasions that destroy everything?

Washington should create a corps capable of bringing postconflict missions up to the standards of military interventions.

“Smart power’ was picked up by Harvard’s Joe Nye and Richard Armitage, President George W. Bush’s former deputy secretary of state at their Center for Strategic and International Studies:

America must revitalize its ability to inspire and persuade rather than merely rely upon its military might. Despite the predominance of U.S. hard power, there are limits to its effectiveness in addressing the main foreign policy challenges facing America today. America’s standing in the world is diminished, and although there have been discrete “soft power” successes – most notably the progress against HIV/AIDS and malaria, and the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation – many of the traditional instruments of soft power, such as public engagement and diplomacy, have been neglected and fallen into disrepair.

This will be a ‘grand strategy’:

This is why we have called for an integrated grand strategy that combines hard military power with soft “attractive power” to create Smart Power of the sort that won the Cold War. Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get a desired outcome. Machiavelli said it was safer to be feared than loved. Today, in the global information age, it is better to be both.

A Missouri congressman likes the idea:

“Our nation needs to put proactively more sandals and sneakers on the ground, in order to prevent having to put boots and bayonets on the ground in the future,” said Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.

To China, this new concept has given rise to an additional amount of skepticism: What kind of the U.S.’ China policy is contained in the “smart power”? Or how the new administration’s policy towards China would differ from the preceding Bush government?

Overall, the new US government will also go on extending the existing policies toward China on some key issues, but there are expected to be some changes with the application of “smart power”. What merits particular attention is that the U.S. will attach more importance to its cooperation and coordination with China on such global issues as climate change, energy, the war on terrorism and joint efforts to cope with global financial crisis; the U.S. will look forward even more to promoting bilateral cooperation for the settlement of multilateral issues in a bid to safeguard its global interests.

The Toronto Star likes the idea:

Barack Obama’s administration will be taking a “smart-power” approach to foreign policy. Just the phrase is comforting to a world fed up with recent U.S. “hard power” military strategy, where all relationships were subsumed into a with-us-or-against-us mindset. But what exactly is it?
Smart power is the integration of hard and soft power, maintaining military strength while using persuasion and example to seed democracy, human rights and other Western ideas throughout the world.

Not everybody’s crazy about it, including of course Fox News:

Clinton’s ‘Smart Power’ slogan Is Just Plain Dumb, Branding Experts Say. Marketing professionals say Hillary Clinton’s catchphrase to sum up her foreign policy is unclear and ripe for misinterpretation. The marketing pros know a bad slogan when they hear one. “Essentially, ‘smart power’ is just more evidence of how bad the communication coaching Hillary Clinton gets and probably cost her the (presidential) campaign,” said Rob Frankel, a branding expert and author of “The Revenge of Brand X.”
Frankel praised the concept but slammed the execution. “The execution is where Hillary traditionally falls on her face,” he said. “And whoever is advising her should be soundly whipped.”

At the country level, a problem has been that the military is not capable of reconstruction and administration in conquered lands. Democracy Arsenal:

Conceptually, the Bush Administration had developed a platform for civilians to work in critical countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re called PRTs, or Provincial Reconstruction Teams. They’ve been around in some form since late 2001 in Afghanistan at the beginning of the war, but two terms later, the Bush Administration had failed to provide a coordinated interagency process where civilians and military personnel could efficiency work together.

The Progressive Policy Institute, allied with the DLC, has given us A Democratic National Security Strategy:

While some complain that the Bush administration has been too radical in recasting America’s national security strategy, we believe it has not been ambitious or imaginative enough. We need to do more, and do it smarter and better to protect our people and help shape a safer, freer world.
Too many on the left seem incapable of taking America’s side in international disputes, reflexively oppose the use of force, and begrudge the resources required to keep our military strong. Viewing multilateralism as an end in itself, they lose sight of goals, such as fighting terrorism or ending gross human rights abuses, which sometimes require us to act — if need be outside a sometimes ineffectual United Nations. . . However troubling the Bush record, the pacifist and protectionist left offers no credible alternative.
Progressive internationalism stresses the responsibilities that come with our enormous power: to use force with restraint but not to hesitate to use it when necessary.

Basically these people want to bring back the good old days of the Cold War, when Harry Truman and John Kennedy promoted the good guys against the bad guys. We won’t talk about Vietnam. Smart power — what does it mean in Afghanistan, for example? Presumably it means more force plus more help for people. Would that appeal to you if you were an Afghan? Would it work?
Questions: (I warned you)
1. The new US foreign policy will be characterized by:
a. cooperation
b. restraint
c. power
2. The new description of US power will be:
a. electrical
b. hydraulic
c. smart
3. The US will still destroy stuff in other countries and then:
a. leave
b. pay locals to rebuild the country
c. create a whole new government program to restore the country to what it was before the US destroyed it, including fat contracts to all sorts of consultants, contractors and PR agents
What do you think?
Oh — if you guessed at or selected the answers that match one of HC’s initials you maxed the test. Congratulations!