The Perils of 'Soft Power' (Earth to Canada… Earth to Canada!)

The New York Post ^ | December 8, 2003 | Amir Taheri

[quidnunc]

What would you do if you opposed the war to liberate Iraq and yet did not wish to join the Marxist-Islamist anti-war coalition? You might well present "soft power" as an alternative to military intervention.

The first time I heard the term "soft power" was in 1994 during a visit to Oslo to interview Norway's leaders. They were then on top of the world because they believed they had solved the Palestinian problem by organizing secret deals between Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government then headed by Yitzhak Rabin.

By 1995, the term had entered the diplomatic jargon. Others, including German and Japanese politicians, used it in their quest for a niche in global politics. Now the French use soft power as a code-word against America, the epitome of "hard power."

Soft power, however, is as old as history. The payments of tribute, and exchange of gifts, including hostages and slaves, are forms of soft power used throughout history. Semiramis and Cleopatra used another form of "soft power" by enticing enemy generals into their beds. Machiavelli's Realpolitik cocktail was a mixture of persuasion (soft power) with coercion (hard power).

Needless to say, it is preferable to achieve one's goal with soft power rather than hard, which could include war. The problem, however, is that many individuals and regimes regard the use of soft power by an adversary as a sign of weakness, and are thus emboldened in their deadly enterprises.

The use of soft power did not prevent Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia and the end of the League of Nations. Soft power extracted a "peace in our time" from Hitler in Munich, but accelerated the advent of the Second World War.

There are more recent examples of soft power producing disastrous results.

Between 1980 and 1988, Germany and France used soft power to persuade the mullahs of Tehran to agree to a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs saw those efforts as a sign that a weak and divided West would do nothing to stop the hoped-for march of Khomeinist "volunteers for martyrdom" to Baghdad and thence to Jerusalem. By 1988, Iran was firing missiles at Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and sending warplanes on intimidation missions in the Saudi airspace.

All that was stopped only when the United States, then led by Ronald Reagan, decided to use a small dose of hard power to knock some sense into the mullahs' heads. A U.S. task force was sent to the Gulf, where it managed to sink half of the Iranian navy in a few minutes.

The mullahs understood a message that France and Germany had tried to impart for seven years, with no success. A shaken Ayatollah Khomeini appeared on TV to announce that he had "swallowed the poisoned chalice "by accepting an end to the war.

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[quidnunc]

A soft answer does not turn away the wrath of wild-eyed fanatics.

[newgeezer]

I saw "soft power" and I thought it might be an article about wind energy.

Drat.

[finnman69]

Soft Power = Maginot Line

[Ashamed Canadian]

What's ironic is that the Canadians 'Peacekeepers' stationed near Srebrenica were forced into an intense firefight, while the Dutch sat on their arse, the Canadians were forced to go it alone. That right there is an example of what soft power gets you.

[gcruse]

Soft power is when the harem guards are armed with marshmallows. Bring knee guards; Turkish carpets give hellacious rug burns.