Is Soft Power Working?

Cartoon by: Mana Neyestani, from Iran

Facebook page: Mana Neyestani

What is soft power? Negotiations. Good will. Trust. The moral high road. Allies. Friends. Contacts. People who want to do you favours. People who will slip you the information you need at a critical time. People who will come to your aid when the chips are down. Reduction on the number of people willing to suicide themselves against you.


Here is a quote form a UBC (self described) conservative hawk blogger.

"My point is that, as it stands, the soft power argument remains just as unimportant as it ever did: the US is getting the same unhelpfulness from the world under Obama as it did from the world under Bush" Jarrett Plonka

Jarrett Plonka gives his opinion that nothing has changed with Obama's soft power. At least I gave a couple of examples of what I think has changed, and hopefully if you are at least somewhat liberal you can extrapolate the rest. My own view is that soft power is more important than you might think.

Just after 9/11, I had the chance to attend a talk at the Kitchener Public Library (for free) by Gwynne Dyer. I had not heard of him before, but Mary Ann had, and wanted to attend. Gwynne gave his analysis of what Osama Bin Laden was trying to achieve through the attack on the USA. I was amazed to hear Gwynne explain how Bin Laden wanted to establish Muslim fundamentalist rule in the middle east, and to do so he needed a war with the USA to make faithful Muslims rise up and take over in many of the pro-western Arabic dictatorships.

Since then I have read many columns written by Gwynne, and attended one more talk. As far as I'm concerned, we need a lot more analysts like him, but instead we get pro-war ex-Generals and propagandists. Although Gwynne Dyer supports peace, he also has an understanding of how wars are fought to achieve objectives, which most war hawks cannot comprehend. The fact is that war hawks seem to want war as an end in itself, not as a means to an end. If all you want is war, then that's all you're going to get.

In fact, Gwynne Dyer was banned from the Canwest group of papers in Canada because he was not sufficiently pro-Israeli for the tastes of the owner (at the time it was Israel "Izzy" Asper).

The war after 9/11 was conducted so incompetently that Bin Laden actually achieved more than he ever expected. Public opinion in the Muslim world turned against the USA. The USA has stretched it's military to the limit in defeating a sworn enemy of Bin Laden's: Saddam Hussein. And, probably not really expected, but within Osama's wildest dreams: The USA has had the worst financial crisis in 50 years, and there are threats of it splitting up in bitter acrimony. Bin Laden must be at least smiling by now.

How could this war have been conducted more competently? Well again it is amazing that the total combined brain power of the USA with all it's educated military analysts and intelligence experts could not foresee anything that has happened so far. They apparently could not imagine an airplane attack on the world Trade Center. They could not imagine that it would be a problem taking over Iraq with 130,000 US soldiers. (Quick math check: Iraq has 31,000,000 people, meaning roughly one US soldier to every 238.46 Iraqis.) Funny thing is, the US military, before the invasion, dropped pamphlets on the Iraqi soldiers telling them to disband during the invasion. Most Iraqi soldiers followed the instructions, expecting to be hired back in the new Iraqi army after the evil dictator Saddam was gone. Instead they were told that they were no longer needed, and in addition many of them were locked up and tortured.

Right now, I'll bet somebody wished they checked their pocket calculator before firing all 400,000 trained military men ready to help maintain order in the post Saddam Iraq. That would be an incredibly easy application soft power! Anyhow, all that is water under the bridge. Many more stupid things happened following the disbanding of the Iraqi army.

The most important lesson to learn, is that we need to use more soft power. With the application of soft power, you can often achieve that which cannot be done through mindless brute force.

Republicans cannot comprehend soft power. That's the result of their life long philosophy, which simply stated, is "Gimme, gimme, gimme. Screw you. God bless America, Get a job you bum. We'll kick your ass until you agree." Very few people are stupid enough to help someone with a philosophy like that, unless they are amply rewarded. And other people will fight to the death against those people for no reward other than doing what's right.

Suddenly Obama is president and he, unlike the Republicans, understands soft power. As a liberal I also can see the progress he has made already. Republicans can't see it, and complain bitterly that he is "bowing" to Arabs. But just a hint: During the Bush years, the Soviet Union was helping Iran build it's nukes, and ever since Obama struck down the missile defense shield, the Russian have been cooperating with Obama against Iran. Not to mention the recent huge demonstration in Iran that would have been unthinkable if the hated Bush was president. Or a huge Pakistani offensive at home against the Taliban. Things are turning around. The Republicans and their "teabaggers" can't see it because of their ideological blinders. But trained military analysts and foreign affairs people can see what's going on.

Just to give another example of soft power. Before the USA had dishonoured itself in the Iraq invasion, one Iraqi civilian attempted to give some information to US soldiers about the whereabouts of Jessica Lynch. She was one of the first American soldier captured during the invasion, and the USA was desperate to get her back. The Iraqi, Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, was driven away by the Americans but finally managed to get his information through to the right people. Just contrast that to the debate that later took place in the USA about the importance of Americans torturing enemies to get information. When you treat people decently, you get good information. Soft power= volunteers come out of the woodwork to help you, hard power=You need to torture people to get information. The final message of friendship from Iraqis to George Bush was a couple of thrown shoes.

Anyhow, most conservative Republicans argue that soft power is a hoax, every bit as bad as global warming and the heresy of Darwinian evolution. They just don't get it, and would rather trust bombing strikes and superior firepower to achieve their ends. Unfortunately the only thing they ever get seems to be more war, albeit a holy one.