Diplomatic Courier: Secretary Clinton recently applied your term “smart power” to explain the administration’s strategy towards applying pressure on the Syrian government. Would you say that this strategy embodies the idea of smart power?
Joseph Nye: Smart power is the combination of hard and soft power to create optimal strategies in particular contexts. In the context of Syria, it makes sense to use the hard power of targeted sanctions, but not a no fly zone such as was used in the very different context of Libya. In Libya, Qaddafi was isolated from the Arab League and lacked support in the UN. Moreover, there was physical distance between Tripoli and Benghazi that made a no-fly zone possible. These conditions are not present in Syria, so we are restricted to sanctions for now.
DC: What would you change about this strategy to more closely align it to your idea of smart power, if anything?
JN: Further efforts in targeted sanctions and resolutions can be used to further delegitimize the Assad regime, but it is difficult to get broad support. We should also work with Turkey, which has taken the lead in the region. In addition, we can continue to press for more UN actions. The Russians and Chinese will resist, but the efforts can still have a delegitimizing effect.
DC: The Obama administration has in general taken to employing smart power as its foreign policy strategy: for example having NATO shoulder the responsibility of the Libya mission and seeking an international chorus prior to condemning the Syrian regime. Do you see this strategy as being successful in a general sense?
JN: Libya was a good example of a smart power strategy. Obama waited for the legitimacy of Arab League and UN resolutions to structure a good soft power narrative. Otherwise the narrative from Morocco to Indonesia would have been “U.S. invades third Muslim country”. Instead, the narrative was that the United States joined with others in a multilateral effort to enforce the United Nations Responsibility to Protect. This is important for the soft power component of smart power. And in the use of hard power, Obama was smart to share the burden in NATO and to avoid boots on the ground. After all, Libya is in Europe’s back yard and it is smart to encourage the Europeans to take the lead there.
DC: How would you define success when employing smart power in the Syrian and Libyan examples?
JN: We do not know the final outcome in Libya, but the outcome so far is better than letting Qaddafi massacre the population in Benghazi. Even if Libya does not manage to become a stable democracy, there is a reasonable prospect of a better situation than existed under Qaddafi. And it is important to remember that under just war theory, one of the criteria is a reasonable prospect, not certainty, of success. Syria is a more difficult case because there is no supportive resolution providing legitimacy, and the complications of using hard power there are greater. There is not now a reasonable prospect of success.
DC: If the American strategy of smart power is working, why are attitudes towards the United States in the Middle East and South Asia actually declining from where they were in the Bush administration?
JN: Polls showed a dramatic decline in American soft power in many parts of the world after the invasion of Iraq. Polls also showed impressive increases in American soft power after the Obama election in all regions except the Middle East and Pakistan. I believe that the reason for the different patterns in that region reflects the unpopularity of American policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine.
DC: In your book, The Future of Power, you speak of two great power shifts—power transition and power diffusion. You contend that power will transition not from the U.S. to China and India, but rather to non-state actors, and that power will become more diffuse with individuals and private organizations playing a bigger role in world politics. How do you believe this will impact the economic relations between and among nations?
JN: One of the power shifts—transition from West to East—refers to states. But even the relations among states are affected by the other power shift—diffusion from states to non-state actors. We live in a global information age in which cheap information technology enables transnational economic systems to flourish and often complicates efforts to states to maintain control. Western companies can shift production to cheaper Asian labor sources. This not only allows outsourcing of production and jobs, but also creates new vulnerabilities to cyber espionage, intellectual property theft, and disruption. At the same time, the power diffusions put a new set of transnational issues on the agenda such as terrorism, climate change, financial stability, and pandemics which require cooperation between all states, both East and West.
DC: In your new book you also speak of the need for the realism school of international relations to adjust to contemporary global realities, such as the aforementioned power diffusion to non-state actors. Yet, one of realism’s pillars is the world’s limited resources and the inevitability of conflict over controlling those resources. Will the current conflicts over energy security, food, and water devolve into ones that are no longer among states?
JN: I think it is a misunderstanding of realism to say that violent conflicts over resources are inevitable. Sometimes they do create conflict, sometimes not. It is also a misunderstanding of economic power—as I argue in Chapter 3 of my book. Economic coercion depends upon asymmetries in markets. Many raw materials are commodities in which price can reallocate supply, and mercantilist views of owning the resource (such as oil) provide less control in a crisis than people think. Other resources, such as natural gas that is delivered by pipelines, provides more opportunities for coercive power, but even here new shale gas supplies are reducing the pipeline power that Russia now enjoys.
DC: How will these conflicts be affected or exacerbated by such power diffusion?
JN: Power diffusion refers to the growing strength of non-state actors. Sometimes these actors reduce conflict among states as multinational corporations did in the oil crisis of 1973. Private actors can bring on new sources of supply. Last year, there was great concern over China’s control over certain rare earths. One of the results has been major investments by multinational corporations outside of China.
DC: Do you believe that our current focus on counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is distracting us from a better grand foreign policy strategy?
JN: Yes, we wasted the first decade of this century on a mistaken strategy. We should return to the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower and avoid wars of occupation, strengthen our economy, and maintain our alliances where we are wanted. Counterinsurgency and nation building is a very labor intensive and lengthy process. It is particularly difficult when the outside power is not welcome among a nationalistic and awakened population.
DC: You seem to reject the popular notion of American decline in the near future. What do you make of the current state of our political gridlock, the debt and deficit crises, the recession, stalemate in two wars, and desperate need for fiscal austerity? If these are not signs of American decline, what are they?
JN: America faces a number of serious problems. One can think of deficits, debt, and secondary education as among the most important. We must solve them to forestall decline. But these problems have solutions, in principle. I spell these out in my book. Whether we will rise to the occasion or not remains to be seen, but it is important to remember that we have overcome worse problems in the past. It is worth remembering that Americans thought they were in decline after Sputnik in the 1950s, again with the rise of Japan in the 1980s, and now with the successful growth of China. But I suspect that the current pessimism is excessive and reflects the conditions that followed the economic crisis of 2008. I suspect it will be corrected in the coming decade.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's January 2012 issue.
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Interview: Dr. Joseph Nye, Jr.
January 21, 2012
Diplomatic Courier: Secretary Clinton recently applied your term “smart power” to explain the administration’s strategy towards applying pressure on the Syrian government. Would you say that this strategy embodies the idea of smart power?
Joseph Nye: Smart power is the combination of hard and soft power to create optimal strategies in particular contexts. In the context of Syria, it makes sense to use the hard power of targeted sanctions, but not a no fly zone such as was used in the very different context of Libya. In Libya, Qaddafi was isolated from the Arab League and lacked support in the UN. Moreover, there was physical distance between Tripoli and Benghazi that made a no-fly zone possible. These conditions are not present in Syria, so we are restricted to sanctions for now.
DC: What would you change about this strategy to more closely align it to your idea of smart power, if anything?
JN: Further efforts in targeted sanctions and resolutions can be used to further delegitimize the Assad regime, but it is difficult to get broad support. We should also work with Turkey, which has taken the lead in the region. In addition, we can continue to press for more UN actions. The Russians and Chinese will resist, but the efforts can still have a delegitimizing effect.
DC: The Obama administration has in general taken to employing smart power as its foreign policy strategy: for example having NATO shoulder the responsibility of the Libya mission and seeking an international chorus prior to condemning the Syrian regime. Do you see this strategy as being successful in a general sense?
JN: Libya was a good example of a smart power strategy. Obama waited for the legitimacy of Arab League and UN resolutions to structure a good soft power narrative. Otherwise the narrative from Morocco to Indonesia would have been “U.S. invades third Muslim country”. Instead, the narrative was that the United States joined with others in a multilateral effort to enforce the United Nations Responsibility to Protect. This is important for the soft power component of smart power. And in the use of hard power, Obama was smart to share the burden in NATO and to avoid boots on the ground. After all, Libya is in Europe’s back yard and it is smart to encourage the Europeans to take the lead there.
DC: How would you define success when employing smart power in the Syrian and Libyan examples?
JN: We do not know the final outcome in Libya, but the outcome so far is better than letting Qaddafi massacre the population in Benghazi. Even if Libya does not manage to become a stable democracy, there is a reasonable prospect of a better situation than existed under Qaddafi. And it is important to remember that under just war theory, one of the criteria is a reasonable prospect, not certainty, of success. Syria is a more difficult case because there is no supportive resolution providing legitimacy, and the complications of using hard power there are greater. There is not now a reasonable prospect of success.
DC: If the American strategy of smart power is working, why are attitudes towards the United States in the Middle East and South Asia actually declining from where they were in the Bush administration?
JN: Polls showed a dramatic decline in American soft power in many parts of the world after the invasion of Iraq. Polls also showed impressive increases in American soft power after the Obama election in all regions except the Middle East and Pakistan. I believe that the reason for the different patterns in that region reflects the unpopularity of American policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine.
DC: In your book, The Future of Power, you speak of two great power shifts—power transition and power diffusion. You contend that power will transition not from the U.S. to China and India, but rather to non-state actors, and that power will become more diffuse with individuals and private organizations playing a bigger role in world politics. How do you believe this will impact the economic relations between and among nations?
JN: One of the power shifts—transition from West to East—refers to states. But even the relations among states are affected by the other power shift—diffusion from states to non-state actors. We live in a global information age in which cheap information technology enables transnational economic systems to flourish and often complicates efforts to states to maintain control. Western companies can shift production to cheaper Asian labor sources. This not only allows outsourcing of production and jobs, but also creates new vulnerabilities to cyber espionage, intellectual property theft, and disruption. At the same time, the power diffusions put a new set of transnational issues on the agenda such as terrorism, climate change, financial stability, and pandemics which require cooperation between all states, both East and West.
DC: In your new book you also speak of the need for the realism school of international relations to adjust to contemporary global realities, such as the aforementioned power diffusion to non-state actors. Yet, one of realism’s pillars is the world’s limited resources and the inevitability of conflict over controlling those resources. Will the current conflicts over energy security, food, and water devolve into ones that are no longer among states?
JN: I think it is a misunderstanding of realism to say that violent conflicts over resources are inevitable. Sometimes they do create conflict, sometimes not. It is also a misunderstanding of economic power—as I argue in Chapter 3 of my book. Economic coercion depends upon asymmetries in markets. Many raw materials are commodities in which price can reallocate supply, and mercantilist views of owning the resource (such as oil) provide less control in a crisis than people think. Other resources, such as natural gas that is delivered by pipelines, provides more opportunities for coercive power, but even here new shale gas supplies are reducing the pipeline power that Russia now enjoys.
DC: How will these conflicts be affected or exacerbated by such power diffusion?
JN: Power diffusion refers to the growing strength of non-state actors. Sometimes these actors reduce conflict among states as multinational corporations did in the oil crisis of 1973. Private actors can bring on new sources of supply. Last year, there was great concern over China’s control over certain rare earths. One of the results has been major investments by multinational corporations outside of China.
DC: Do you believe that our current focus on counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan is distracting us from a better grand foreign policy strategy?
JN: Yes, we wasted the first decade of this century on a mistaken strategy. We should return to the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower and avoid wars of occupation, strengthen our economy, and maintain our alliances where we are wanted. Counterinsurgency and nation building is a very labor intensive and lengthy process. It is particularly difficult when the outside power is not welcome among a nationalistic and awakened population.
DC: You seem to reject the popular notion of American decline in the near future. What do you make of the current state of our political gridlock, the debt and deficit crises, the recession, stalemate in two wars, and desperate need for fiscal austerity? If these are not signs of American decline, what are they?
JN: America faces a number of serious problems. One can think of deficits, debt, and secondary education as among the most important. We must solve them to forestall decline. But these problems have solutions, in principle. I spell these out in my book. Whether we will rise to the occasion or not remains to be seen, but it is important to remember that we have overcome worse problems in the past. It is worth remembering that Americans thought they were in decline after Sputnik in the 1950s, again with the rise of Japan in the 1980s, and now with the successful growth of China. But I suspect that the current pessimism is excessive and reflects the conditions that followed the economic crisis of 2008. I suspect it will be corrected in the coming decade.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's January 2012 issue.
