Leonid Savin
Copying alien theories and models is unlikely to benefit our state and people.
From the mid-2000s to the early 2020s, there was a fashion for “soft power” in the Russian community of political scientists and international affairs experts – numerous articles on this topic were published, dissertations were defended, representatives of a number of Russian NGOs and foundations eloquently tried to convince that they were engaged in “soft power” issues in order to promote Russia’s interests abroad. We must agree that the term coined by Joseph Nye Jr. was indeed attractive. True, he also talked about hard power, smart power and cyber power. And then there’s the sharp power (by Christopher Walker) and the sticky power (by Walter Russell Mead). And different views on how to use power to exercise US domination led to controversy between theorists of these methodologies.
But it was “soft power” that became popular in Russia. Probably because it was opposed to hard power. And although in 2008 Russia resorted to hard power in South Ossetia, soft power continued to be discussed just as actively.
This approach, in general, seems to be wrong. Instead of developing their own concepts, strategies and doctrines, Russia reflected on models that were alien to us. And their analysis did not have enough critical depth to realize the importance of an authentic and sovereign approach to the conduct of international affairs. Because of this, the Russian theory of international relations has not yet developed, although attempts by a number of domestic scientists and political scientists have been made for many years.
Fascination with the West is not a trend of recent decades. In the Soviet era, we (alas) also began to use terms and concepts that were formulated by our ideological opponents. The term “bipolar world”, “Third World”, as well as more specific definitions, such as the “Cuban missile crisis” – are all products of the US presidential administration and the pool of American political scientists serving the White House and the State Department.
The same phenomenon occurred with soft power. And, having created in their own imagination some kind of model that, theoretically, can influence others, domestic political scientists started talking about the need for its application at the global level.
If we take into account that “soft power is more of a figurative generalization than a normative concept”, such an approach could justify itself.
However, the initial positions and capabilities of Russia and the United States in this regard are very different from each other.
First, the budget that is used in the United States for all kinds of psychological operations, cultural and ideological influence, scientific and educational programs, as well as the maintenance of the staff of its own agents around the world is not comparable with the means that, even under ideal conditions, Russia would have for conducting foreign policy.
The formation of the apparatus of “soft power” of the United States began in the 70s. and it was quite diverse. From USAID, the Peace Corps and organizations like NDI and the Republican Institute to Saul Alinsky’s network projects and Protestant missionary groups, they have all worked for decades in different regions of the world, collecting the necessary information and developing unique methods of social engineering (it is worth noting that the school of behaviorism, that is, the management of human behavior, also originated in the United States). Budgets of millions of dollars from year to year were allocated and mastered by a whole army of scientists, specialists and performers. Best practices that have proven themselves in a particular country/region have been scaled up at the global level.
Secondly, soft power does not exist on its own, but only in conjunction with hard power.
While hard power—the ability to coerce—derives from a country’s military or economic power, soft power arises from the appeal of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. Hard power remains decisive in the world of states trying to defend their independence. It was at the heart of the Bush administration’s new national security strategy. But, according to Nye, the neoconservatives who advised the president made a serious miscalculation: they focused too much on using America’s military power to force other countries to comply with Washington’s will, but paid too little attention to soft power. According to Nye, it was soft power that was supposed to prevent terrorists from recruiting supporters from among the moderate majority. And it was soft power that was supposed to help cope with the most important global problems that require multilateral cooperation between states. Nye spoke about this in his book, which was published in 2004 after the US invasion of Iraq.
Again, the U.S. hard power budget is also tens of times the amount Russia spent on military and defense.
Thirdly, it is necessary to pay closer attention to the personality of the author himself. With a Ph.D. and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Josiah Nye is by no means a pacifist and a supporter of exclusively debatable methods of diplomacy. From 1977 to 1979, he served as Assistant Under Secretary of State for Security, Science and Technology Support. He was also chairman of the National Security Council’s group on nuclear nonproliferation. From 1993 to 1994, he was chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and from 1994 to 1995, he was under secretary of defense for international security affairs. That is, his main experience is law enforcement agencies, while he was one of those who made decisions. And in 1994, there was a US military intervention in Haiti with the aim of returning Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency, who repeatedly violated the country’s Constitution. Of course, this was done under the guise of “restoring democracy” in order to improve Bill Clinton’s rating. Interestingly, in 2004, the United States itself financed the overthrow of Aristide, having previously created the necessary conditions (both in the field of destruction of the country’s economy and the creation of a controlled opposition). The mention of such a change of mood on the part of the United States is not accidental, because we are talking about soft power as a kind of political tool. And during this period, there is just a series of color revolutions in the post-Soviet space, behind which the United States stood. Isn’t this a manifestation of the “soft power” of professional security official Joseph Nye? The understanding of this came to the Russian political science community relatively recently.
By the way, Joseph Nye himself coined the term “soft power” in the late 1980s and regularly used it in his works before the book of the same name was published.
For example, in his 1990 work “Doomed to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power,” he argues for the need to control international processes, albeit not directly, but defending one’s strategic interests. And for this, the United States has the necessary resources that need to be correctly distributed – one part to maintain military power, and the other to skillful diplomacy, which he called “soft power.”
We read: “The United States has both traditional hard power resources and new soft power resources to solve the problems of transnational interdependence. The crucial question is whether it will have the political leadership and strategic vision to turn these power resources into real influence in the transition period of world politics. The implications for stability in the nuclear age are enormous. A strategy to manage the transition to complex interdependence over the next decades will require the United States to invest its resources in maintaining geopolitical balance, in being open to the rest of the world, in developing new international institutions, and in major reforms to restore domestic sources of U.S. power.
Quite obvious attitudes are given for the continuation of the global dominance of the United States. At the same time, at the time of writing this work, the USSR still existed, but Nye had already warned about the need to invest in new international structures in order to manage world processes through them.
Another mistake of Russian political scientists is that they began to call American diplomacy as a whole nothing more than “soft power.” You can often find expressions such as “US soft power in the post-Soviet space”, “US soft power in Central Asia”, etc., etc. As if there were not previously a wide range of instruments of diplomatic influence conducted by the US State Department. And all this was long before Joseph Nye invented his term.
According to his definition, the “soft power” of the country is based on three sources: culture, political values and its foreign policy. Any state has all this, but only their essence and form are different. If the United States is based on a Protestant religious culture, exclusivity and superiority with an emphasis on God’s chosen (the doctrine of Predestined Destiny) with a moralizing bias, then other countries and peoples have different views on world affairs.
Developing this idea, Leonova rightly notes that “soft power” is formed on the basis of the attractiveness of not only the general culture of a given country, but also its political ideals and traditions. Consequently, this refers to political culture. Indeed, when the political course of a given country finds a positive response among partners, the potential of “soft power” increases. Consequently, the resources of “soft power” include political institutions, political doctrines and concepts expressed in the country’s activities both at the domestic political level and in the international arena.
But does U.S. foreign policy resonate favorably in other countries? Of course, there is a certain correlation between public support and military interventions. For example, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, U.S. ratings plummeted in many countries that were considered allies. Apparently, this excited Joseph Nye, who saw in the critical attitude towards his country on the part of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of the world a threat to the attractiveness in which the resources of previous decades had invested.
But, definitely, the attractiveness of the United States is also connected with the well-being of the citizens who live there, and in the 90s, as well as the beginning of the 2000s, this country was considered promising for life, work and career. But recently, the rise in unemployment, crime and the decline in the quality of life as such in the United States leaves much to be desired. Of course, there are quite poor countries from where illegal migrants are trying to get to the United States through Mexico, but this is done out of despair and high expectations. It is doubtful that the segment of illegal migrants who are not highly qualified and are not able to actively contribute to the US economy can be attributed to the effect of “soft power”.
Consequently, there is a certain illusory component in this model. Just as the picture in Hollywood movies differs from real life in the United States, the culture, political values, and image of U.S. foreign policy itself are distorted by the imagination of those affected by these three components.
If we simplify the comparison of the “soft power” of different countries on the basis of these three components, we can say that we have the same name for a culinary dish, but the proportions of the ingredients and their quality (as well as the preparation process) will be different, so giving this dish the same name does not make any sense.
Let the United States remain with its soft, hard, smart and other forces. Of course, they need to be borne in mind, but only analyzed through a critical prism and take into account how they can use these tools against us.
We need to develop our own concepts, theories and doctrines based on national history, culture and values, and in accordance with the current political moment.