Joseph S. Nye of Harvard University testified about the vital role soft power should play in restoring American’s reputation in the world before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 4, 2010.
As defined by Nye, soft power is “the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes by the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuasion and positive attraction.” Over the past twenty years, the term has been widely used by world leaders and the media. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been a recent outspoken advocate for investing more in soft power tools, such as diplomacy and economic assistance, and for improving integration of America’s soft power tools with our military’s hard power.
Nye specifically spoke of international education as a powerful tool of soft power. He said:
Research has consistently shown that exchange students return home with a more positive view of the country in which they studied and the people with whom they interacted, and foreign educated students are more likely to promote democracy in their home country if they are educated in democratic countries. The results can be dramatic. For example, at the end of the Cold War, Gorbachev’s embrace of perestroika and glasnost was influenced by ideas learned in the U.S. by Alexander Yakovlev when he was an exchange student. Although it took two decades to materialize, that was a huge return on a small investment.
In his testimony, Nye said that a wide variety of a country’s basic resources can be converted into soft power by skillful conversion strategies. These resources include “culture, values, legitimate policies, a positive domestic model, a successful economy, a competent military and others.” Nye said that sometimes these resources are specially shaped for soft power purposes, such as “national intelligence services, information agencies, diplomacy, public diplomacy, exchange programs, assistance programs, training programs, and various other measures.”
To read Nye’s full testimony about the value of soft power, read yesterday’s post by Matt Armstrong on www.MountainRunner.us, a leading blog on subjects related to global engagement.
Joseph Nye has been kicking this concept around for a while. When I first heard him use it five or six years ago at a UK speech many in the audience were skeptical. It seemed a repackaging of what cultural and exchange professionals have been doing day in and day out for years. They were of course right but that is not a bad thing. Perhaps it took the word “power” to get the importance of what we do through to policy makers. So I like the headlines of what Nye is saying but we are not on the same page with the detail. His notes tells him, American students return with “a more positive view of the country in which they studied.” Well Gee Whizz! That is not saying much since most American students already have a positive view in the first place. That’s why they chose that country. A vacation might also have given them an even “more positive view.” The question is how much they have actually interacted with the society? That is the challenge for many study abroad programs.
The next point is his actual one. That the programs influence foreign students, who tend to the US for educational rather than for cultural experiences. I am all for democracy but I am also for American students actually learning more deeply about the societies in which they study. This is not easy. In order to advance “soft power” we need Americans who really do understand societies on their own terms. And we need the government to be that page as well.