Posted on 12/13/2007 6:22:06 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) - After six hard years of war, the United States is awakening to the idea that "soft power" is a better way to regain influence and clout in a world bubbling with instability.
And nowhere is the change in thinking more advanced than in the US military, which is pushing for greater diplomacy, economic aid, civic action and civilian capabilities to prevent new wars and win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates caught the spirit in a much praised speech at Kansas State University last month, calling for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian instruments of power.
Such an appeal would have been unthinkable not long ago, as Gates himself acknowledged, saying it was a "man bites dog" story.
"I think having stubbed our toe badly on Iraq, people are realizing that we weren't doing that well, and it's time for a change," said Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and former senior Pentagon official.
Nye popularized the term "soft power" in books and essays which argue that a key source of US clout is its ability to attract friends and allies by investing in the international good.
"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism," a report by a commission Nye co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, warned last month. As a result, it said, "Suspicions of American power have run deep."
The United States needs to pursue a positive vision that goes beyond the war on terrorism, it said.
The response of the Bush administration has been "a mixed bag," Nye said.
"But I do think that the view that we have not had smart power in terms of combining the various instruments we have, that we have underinvested in soft power, is represented in the Gates' remarks," he said.
Gates pointed to the huge disparity between the Pentagon's half trillion dollar budget and the State Department's 37 billion dollars.
Its 6,600 diplomats amount to the crew of a single US aircraft carrier, he said.
The US Agency for International Development has been slashed from 15,000 to 3,000 people, and the US Information Agency was dismantled, he said.
Underfunded and undermanned, US civilian agencies have not kept up with the demand for experts in war zones, leading to bitter complaints from US military officers that they have been left holding the bag.
General James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, recalled recently that after the march on Baghdad in 2003, his marines were sent to stabilize southern Iraq.
"We were told to expect local governance teams and governance support teams which would help us with those functions and many, many more," he said. "Those teams did not arrive."
Marines have to be prepared to perform those tasks in future conflicts, he said.
But the right answer is to fund agencies "that we know are going to be players with this soft power (so) that they could develop sort of an expeditionary mentality and people who are anxious to get overseas and get their hands dirty," Conway said.
The State Department is seeking funding for a deployable corps of civilian experts.
But it is the military that has taken the lead in thinking about ways to harness civilian expertise to create security, raising fears in some quarters of a more militarized foreign policy.
The model is a new Africa Command that the Pentagon is establishing to help strengthen security in a troubled continent.
It is supposed to have a senior State Department official as its deputy and components from other civilian agencies.
"The risk is that it may end up being overly military and not enough of the others in part because of money and bodies. State for example is very worried about it for that reason," said Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to NATO.
The military wants civilian agencies to do more to prevent wars, but is not waiting for them to get their act together, analysts say.
Instead, it has stepped up thinking and planning for what it calls "phase zero," military jargon for conflict prevention.
"I think they've come to the conclusion that insurgencies are really hard to fight. And so it would be better if they could not have the conflict in the first place," said Robert Perito, an expert at the US Institute of Peace.
"In conflict prevention, of course, there is very little military component to that. It's mostly all political and economic. That's the other thing that is going on," he said.
Nye popularized the term "soft power" in books and essays which argue that a key source of US clout is its ability to attract friends and allies by investing in the international good.
"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism," a report by a commission Nye co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, warned last month. As a result, it said, "Suspicions of American power have run deep."
The United States needs to pursue a positive vision that goes beyond the war on terrorism, it said.
--
"..attract friends and allies by investing in the international good."
And some folks wonder why we are in the global "mess" we are today.
What a crock of shiite
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (born 1937) is the co-founder, along with Robert Keohane, of the international relations theory neoliberalism developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he pioneered the theory of soft power.
Nye also served as Deputy to the Undersecretary of State in the Carter Administration, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Clinton Administration, and was considered by many to be the preferred choice for National Security Advisor in the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry.
I bet he supported returning the Panama Canal to China , uhh, I mean Panama, as well. transnational gesture and all, yaknow
something is soft about this guy alright,, his noggin.
We should still slash State's funding by 35 billion.
Prof. Nye fails to understand that, before "soft power" has a chance to work, "hard power" must first pound the enemy into dust.
Then -- and only then -- does "soft power" have a chance to make progress.
I already want to give a pre-emptive bitch slapping for the “journalists” who will in the future give liberals credit for there being a successful war on terror and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Bush was doing it all wrong until the liberals made him do it the right way.”
“Only when Reid, Pelosi and Murtha forced the president to use diplomacy, did the war change from a failed military exercise and become a successful diplomatic one.”
“The military horribly bungled the WoT, Iraq and Afghanistan, until the Democrats forced the Pentagon to stop fighting, stopped giving any aid to either nation, and encouraged the Iranians to take over both countries.”
“The liberals realized early on that Iraq was just war for oil and on behalf of Israel. Now that gasoline is $20 a gallon, and Israel was destroyed by a defensive nuclear weapon launched from Iran, America should be happy that the Democrats restored balance to the world.”
"Soft power" goes back at least to the Marshall Plan. We tried it in Vietnam and from the start in Iraq, though implementation has been uneven at best.
What the article tries to bury is the incontrovertible fact, that "soft power" can operate only within the protective carapace of the military exoskeleton.
“Scott Carpenter, who had been in charge of the Iran pro-democracy programs at State, recently told the New York Sun that those programs were “dead” because they had been sabotaged by career State Department officials and Democrat political appointees, such as Suzanne Maloney, who now works at Brookings.”
Gee, Why wouldn’t we give “State” more money????
Sarcasm off
A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
...but it is not this day.
An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down...
...but it is not this day.
This day we fight!
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Wow. What a loser resume.
“What the article tries to bury is the incontrovertible fact, that “soft power” can operate only within the protective carapace of the military exoskeleton.”
Worth repeating.
Gary Hart has got to be in there someplace.
Wow... Talk about dodging a bullet.
War weary media is lost in space. The media is just musing about their lack of ability, and they tried mightily, to illicit surrender.
Why do people forget that the job of the U.S. military is to kill people and break things? [Sidebar: That's what my DI taught me]
I pray we last longer than the Roman empire.
Sheesh.
5.56mm
Basically, peace through strength.
What a novel idea...:)
It is beyond ridiculous--we are creating a command that does not even have a home because none of the nations want us there. Beyond that, the economic disparity created by our very presence will cause more bloodshed (beside giving terrorists a great training zone.) Europe didn't abandon the dark continent for altruistic reasons--their empires foundered upon her shores.
In other words, just like Marxism, it's nothing more than an intellectual game to them. One that sounds "fun" and looks like great theory on paper, but has no basis in reality.
That will bring further invasio of the USA. Soft power already has caused a demographic invasion of illegal aliens in the USA.
Now we ant soft power to invite invasion from, China? Iran?
What a braying donkey laugh you AHs are who wrote this festering liberal piece of putrid strategic pornography.
Take your fantasies to the ME, and watch your guts spill onto that dry ochre earth!
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