The Center for Global Partnership

In March this year I had the opportunity to serve as a panelist in a public symposium at Harvard University, “Soft Power and Public Diplomacy,” cosponsored by the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Social Science Research Council, and Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.¹ I was impressed by the fact that although it was a weekday evening there was a standing-room-only audience in the 150-seat auditorium. Professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr., of Harvard, who coined the term “soft power,” was surprised at the turnout, remarking that it was highly unusual these days to see such a crowd at a symposium on Japan-U.S. relations.

An indication of the rising interest in the subject of soft power can be seen in the fact that when I ran an English-language Google search of the term around the time of the symposium I found some 42 million hits (a Japanese-language search revealed about 60,000 hits). This compares with about 60,000 English-language hits and 3,000 Japanese-language hits a year earlier. At the time of writing (August 2006), there are about 94 million English-language hits and 130,000 Japanese-language hits. Because Google tweaks its algorithm from time to time, one cannot make a simple comparison, but it is clear that there has been an amazing increase.

The significance of soft power

It is well known that soft power refers to a country’s ability to obtain the outcomes it wants not through coercion or rewards but through its attractiveness—specifically, the attractiveness of its culture, political values, and policies. This concept underlies the philosophy of the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu’s adage “It is best to win without fighting.” It is regarded as another form of power, one that cannot be disregarded in the context of international politics, which tends to be discussed solely in terms of hard power (military and economic power).

According to Nye, to disparage soft power threatens the legitimacy of the exercise of hard power, raising the costs of the accomplishment of policy objectives. A good example is Turkey ’s refusal, out of concern for domestic anti-American sentiment, to permit U.S. forces to make use of bases in Turkey , which significantly limited U.S. forces’ options for its 2003 Iraq invasion.

What interests me most about the concept of soft power is the similarity of the thinking behind it to the thinking behind the concept of social capital that has been attracting so much attention in recent years. Social capital, a concept developed by Nye’s colleague Robert Putnam, refers to the characteristics that support social institutions in fundamental ways by encouraging cooperative behavior—trust, norms, networks, and so on. An important point in Putnam’s argument is his identification of such cooperative behavior as “capital” because it enhances the operational efficiency of institutions and society. Articulating the dynamics of foreign policy and society—traditionally treated as peripheral or second-order issues because they are hard to quantify, even though everyone acknowledges their importance—in terms of soft power (Nye) and social capital (Putnam) and thus placing them on the platform of debate is a major achievement.

It is interesting that although Nye and Putnam, two of America ’s leading political scientists, specialize in different fields—foreign policy (international relations) and society (civil society), respectively—they have similar viewpoints. American political science gives the impression of being totally dominated these days by rational-choice theory making maximal use of mathematical models, and one is often disillusioned by its superficial understanding of humanity. On the other hand, the emergence of arguments like those of Nye and Putnam impresses one with the depth of American political science. Evaluation of the concept of soft power must be grounded in this intellectual context.

Misunderstandings of soft power

In a recent article Kazuo Ogoura, president of the Japan Foundation, writes, “Confusion over the concept of soft power has arisen because it has been somewhat distorted, misused, and in extreme cases abused.”² Here I would like to advance a number of points I have noticed in this connection.

First, the main point of soft power is that it lowers the costs (what systems theory calls transaction costs) of accomplishing policy objectives; it is not just about the promotion of “soft content” industries. Perhaps because of the use of the term “attractiveness” in discussing soft power, or perhaps because of a kind of snobbism, there seems to be a tendency to call anything “attractive” soft power. Attractiveness enriches life, but attractiveness on its own is not soft power.

More precisely, attractiveness can be a source of soft power, but whether it can become soft power depends on the policy objective itself, of course, and also policy aims and context and the methods employed. Moreover, naturally enough, in gauging how attractive a source is there is a perception gap between the sender and the receiver, or within each. One must not conflate source and soft power. The matter is more complex.

For example, when Japanese people hear the term “Self-Defense Forces,” they tend to think of immediately of an entity that wields hard power. But depending on how and why the SDF are mobilized, and in what context, they can also be the source of soft power. Consider, too, Prime Minister Jun’ichirô Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead (including a number of men convicted as class-A war criminals after World War II), much criticized both within and outside Japan. It cannot be denied that to some conservatives, at least, “Yasukuni is soft power.”³ Of course, depending on developments in domestic politics and the international situation, Japanese public opinion as a whole may come to endorse this view; alternatively, Yasukuni may cease even to be a source of soft power.

To tell the truth, one thing that makes me uncomfortable with Nye’s articulation of soft power is that he himself disregards or oversimplifies this complexity, or at least gives the impression of doing so. For example, he names Japan ’s low birthrate and aging population structure and its poor English-language skills as constraints on its soft power. Whether these are constraints, though, depends on Japan ’s view of the ideal nation and society and the policy objectives for achieving that ideal; they cannot be itemized so simply. I think the criticism that Nye’s argument puts too much emphasis on America ’s national interest—especially what liberals consider national interest—springs from this.

Still, this is a matter of the way Nye discusses soft power; it does not devalue the idea of soft power itself. We must also understand that behind Nye’s strident advocacy of soft power lies concern over the Bush administration’s (especially the neoconservatives’) foreign policy, which seems to rely on hard power alone, and over America’s isolation in the world—that which al Qaeda most desires.

Nye is an authority on nuclear deterrence, and it is well known that as assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration he played a central role in redefining the Japan-U.S. security relationship. Perhaps for this reason, many critics assert that for all the talk of soft power, in the end America relies on hard power, and that soft power merely camouflages the intent of great powers (especially America ) to make use of hard power. Leaving aside conspiracy theorists who see a sinister plot behind every U.S. action, Nye has responded to critics as follows: “The Soviet Union once had a good deal of soft power, but it lost much of it after the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Soviet soft power declined even as its hard economic and military resources continued to grow. Because of its brutal policies, the Soviet Union ’s hard power actually undercut its soft power.”⁴ He also points to Norway and Canada as examples of countries that exercise greater political influence than their military and economic power would suggest: Norway for its conflict mediation and Canada for its stance of international cooperation, which distances it from the United States .

Another criticism of soft power is that it is “too soft.” In other words, its efficacy is hard to measure and evaluate. But although soft power is difficult to quantify, the concept of soft power is significant precisely because the dynamics of international politics are articulated in terms of power. This criticism seems to me to put the cart before the horse.

In the field of international relations, power is seen as the skills and endowments for bringing about the outcomes a country desires. But whether it be military power or economic power, the more rigorously one thinks about power, the harder it is to measure and evaluate. Here, too, sources and power must not be conflated; even if sources can be quantified, it does not necessarily follow that the sum of sources and the sum of power will be proportionate.

When it comes to soft power, a crime committed by a single American soldier in Japan can abruptly undo all the goodwill for America built up until then. To give another example, an overheated “ Korea boom” in Japan can evoke in some people a nationalistic anti-Korean sentiment prompted by a kind of cultural defensiveness. Measurement and evaluation are a thorny business, but that does not mean that the concept of soft power is pointless or unnecessary.

The application of soft power

Nye discusses the application of soft power in the context of public diplomacy (public relations and cultural diplomacy). He divides public diplomacy into three dimensions: “daily communications” (the explanation of policy decisions), “strategic communication” (“symbolic events and communications” focused on strategic themes), and long-term cultural exchange (citizen and intellectual exchange).⁵ This classification follows the U.S. Department of State’s public diplomacy categories.

Nye also states that government cannot manage soft power to the same extent as hard power; pointing out the strong influence of such actors as civil society organizations, businesses, universities, foundations, religious organizations, ethinic groups, and international organizations, he maintains that government needs to take their influence into consideration and, when necessary, collaborate with them. It cannot be denied that underlying this consideration and collaboration is national interest, which is one reason that Nye’s concept of soft power is sometimes criticized for placing the state too much at the center of things.

Nye’s idea of national interest is far from narrow, however. At the symposium he used the term “meta–soft power” in the context of the state’s capacity and introspective ability to criticize itself, saying that this most fundamentally defines a country’s attractiveness, legitimacy, and reliability. If we take this viewpoint, excluding themes, opinions, or participants critical of a nation’s policies from publicly funded cultural exchange activities on the grounds that such activities use “taxpayers’ money” can go against the national interest. Especially in today’s information-rich and highly networked society, such narrow-mindedness will immediately be known worldwide.

At the symposium Nye also declared that soft power is not a zero-sum game. In other words, through cooperation one’s own country and other countries (or other actors) can together enhance their soft power. This also sounded to me like a warning against the “power game” view of national interest predicated on war. Nye’s point is extremely important today, when national interest exists in a context of various “publics” or “public interests,” including not only relations between states but also everything from civil society to regional alliances and global society.

In Japan these days, we hear calls for strengthening soft power and nationwide solidarity so as not to “lose out” to hypothetical enemy and competitor states, but I would not like to see us lapse into a zero-sum-game way of thinking. A “cool Japan” burdened with a weird sort of nationalism or a narrowly defined national interest will simply turn off people around the world.

Unquestionably, the Japan Foundation is an organization involved with soft power rather than hard power. As an independent administrative institution, it is also most definitely an organization representing Japan’s national interest. I hope and trust that this will never be a narrowly defined national interest.

[NOTES]

1. For a discussion of the symposium (in Japanese), see Wochi Kochi 11 (June-July 2006), pp. 53–59.

2. Kazuo Ogoura, " Sofuto pawâ ron no shikaku," Wochi Kochi 11 (June-July 2006), pp. 60–65; translated under the title of "The Limits of Soft Power," Japan Echo vol. 33, no. 5 (October 2006), pp. 48–50.

3. These are the words of Hiroshi Yuasa, an editorial writer with the Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

4. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), p. 9.

5. Nye, Soft Power, pp. 107–9.

[AUTHOR PROFILE]

Yasushi Watanabe has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Harvard University. He has been a visiting fellow at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and is now a professor at Keiô University. His special fields are cultural anthropology, cultural policy, and American studies. In 2002 he was an Abe Fellow. His works include Afutâ Amerika [After America], winner of the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Hiroshi Shimizu Award of the Japanese Association of American Studies.

This article was translated from “Sofuto pawa ron saiho,” Wochi Kochi, (a quarterly journal by the Japan Foundation,) October/November 2006, pp. 64-68.