Soft Power as a Policy

5 min readNov 23, 2019

What is soft power? How is it different from hard power?

The concept of ‘power’ when it comes to relations across borders in international affairs has usually referred to ‘hard’ power. This is a nation’s power in terms of intuitively understood and easily quantifiable strengths such as the economic position and military prowess of a nation. When it comes to how it is enacted as part of public policy, it is important to note that hard power usually manifests in diktats and imperatives. Punishment, threat, and orders form a large part of its execution framework, including but not limited to the threat of force, economic threats, etc.

It is in this context that the difference between hard power and soft power becomes most apparent because in contrast to what can be dubbed as the more forceful nature of hard power, soft power actually focuses more on persuasion and positive attraction to achieve goals. Using techniques that now quite clearly fall under NUDGE, soft power aims to build influence using network building, narrative control, mutual understandings basis unwritten rules, etc. It focuses on leveraging the assets of a country (whether physical or otherwise) in order to achieve one’s aims.

Joseph Nye, the originator of the concept, had actually outlined three major sources of soft power as he saw them that apply to most nations. His three pillars of soft power are — political values, culture, and foreign policy. In today’s world of course, it becomes important to remember the individual sources contributing to these pillars and how they can be harnessed — especially with the omnipresence of digitalization in all aspects of political and public life.

Soft Power in the United Kingdom

As can be seen in the above concept map, the United Kingdom has had a multi-pronged strategy toward building its soft power in all matters. Further, it has been a deliberate effort and an excellent case in terms of capitalising on its unique national assets (the constitutional monarchy, the pre-existing influence of the English language and literature across the world, etc.). They have leveraged their sway in the erstwhile commonwealth countries, while ensuring vociferous participation in most international councils of note — making their stand very clear on different issues. This is a very effective way of declaring alliances and participating in give-and-take without making formal commitments and tying up hard resources. They have also taken control of their own country’s narrative in the popular consciousness, which is why they still hold a strong appeal despite the recurrent waves of post-colonialism in literature, art, films, etc. across the world. They harness the points of communications of and by the government, citizens, tourist representation, etc. for this purpose. They have also leveraged the common language — English- and used it to ingratiate themselves into the average everyday lives of people around the globe (e.g.- scholarships, BBC, numerous exchange programmes, capitalising on having some of the oldest and best English universities, etc.) as an aspirational ideal to be achieved. Having established this link, it becomes easier for them to stay on the right side of most. A recent and much applauded move here was removing students from immigration targets. The last way of using soft power that feeds into their determined control of public image has been the ahead-of-its-time cognizance of the evolving role of military in today’s world. Supporting their strong alliance focus is their use of their war corps for humanitarian missions and post war rehabilitation across the world.

Soft Power in the United States of America

The United States of America has been a loud proponent of Hard Power. The very foundation of the nation is built on military force, coercion, and intimidation. But is that where all of its power comes from? Let’s take a look at some poignant measures taken by the USA to quietly wield its influence.

The Marshall Plan — The Marshall Plan was implemented after World War II, when Western Europe was in shambles. It comprised of billions of dollars worth of aid in the form of food and medical care; technological and capability advice for rebuilding destroyed infrastructures, and humungous amounts in monetary grants. This heavy activity could have been to prevent any influence of Soviet Union on Western European countries.

Hollywood — Hollywood can said to be the epicentre of world entertainment. In today’s world of extremely high content consumption, movies, music, videos, etc are the norm, and more so are those that come out of the USA. Shows that showcase a different lifestyle, videos that depict a carefree consumer, movie series about heroes who save the world are lapped up hungrily. Some youths in China are even using the DVD series of the TV show FRIENDS to circulate content that the Chinese government is trying to cover up.

But is this what we remember?

The Bush Doctrine, and the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq have diminished the perception of USA as a friendly country. The current President has done nothing to help the cause. Under his tenure so far, the United States’ rank in soft power has dropped from first to fourth.

Other Notable Examples — The case study of France in 2019

France’s strong and clear political positioning amidst an increasingly unstable climate has proved a boon, despite the gilets jaunes movement and a host of other concerns such as the Notre Dame fire (the reaction to which incident is further proof if any of the strength of France’s soft power). Strong culturally as well as the home to iconic sites like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, France is the most travelled to tourist destination in the world — and well aware of the impact this has in hard terms too, France keeps up a vast diplomatic network. It outstrips most others in memberships to multilateral and international organisations, and according to Soft30, it even has the highest number of diplomatic cultural missions through its Alliance Francaise network. Special mention must be given to the way the resources have been wielded by Macron, especially with respect to his work hosting the 2019 G7 Summit. He addressed critical issues such as climate change and US-Iran tensions smoothly and even smoothed ruffled American feathers w.r.t. the French tech tax — an admirable combination of using existing soft power and adding to it by pushing France’s image.