According to Gemini, the apex of US “soft power” was experienced in 1985 when James Baker, as a relatively new Treasury Secretary was able to convince France, West Germany, the UK and primarily Japan to collectively push down the value of the dollar relative to the Japanese yen and German deutschemark in return for US commitment to reduce its federal deficit in an arrangement known as the Plaza Accord. A compliant Japan that was both dependent on the US for military protection as well as for its lucrative export market proved to be pivotal in the landmark agreement that allowed the US to rebalance global capital flows for its benefit without having to “fire a single shot” to do so.
To be clear, “soft power” measures the ability of a nation to influence the behavior and preferences of others through attraction, persuasion and shared values rather than through military force or economic coercion.
As a concept, the notion of “soft power” was first conceived by Harvard Political Scientist, Joseph Nye in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s as he recognized that a nation’s culture (popular art, music, food and media…), political values (democracy, human rights and domestic freedom), and foreign policies (international actions perceived as legitimate, moral and cooperative), could all be used in aggregate as a seductive collective force to bring other countries “on board” as allies who would not only aspire to imitate the US but would also help sustain the US as a superpower.
Interestingly, current Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, right now seems to be trying to find his ‘inner James Baker” and an ultimate “soft power” lever to bring Iran to its knees by extending economic sanctions on any country conducting commerce with Iran as a means of subduing this Mid-eastern country who holds the upper hand in its conventional armed conflict with the US and Israel.
But Bessent, in contrast to Baker, is unlikely to succeed with his “soft power gambit” for the following reasons:
1. Soft power should precede unilateral armed conflict and not the other way around.
2. The threat of economic sanctions is a “stick” and Bessent isn’t offering a “carrot” other than claiming that everyone who goes along with the Trump administration’s demands of isolating Iran economically will “reap the rewards of our partnership”.
But Bessent’s offer of “partnership” is also out of step with “soft power” tenets as it follows a unilateral (the US and Israel and no one else…) start to this war that has failed.
Meanwhile, the overall approach of the Trump administration lacks coherence. Consider that last week, Secretary Bessent was trying to threaten and seduce world leaders to go along with “Operation Economic Outcast” to only antagonize these same world leaders this week with the administration picking now to bring Russia back into the “fold” of G20 world leaders who met in Asheville, North Carolina this week. Russia had been excluded from this meeting since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine
3. In addition to the two “strikes” referenced above that represent failure in “soft power” tenets, the Trump administration can’t check any of the boxes identified by Joseph Nye referenced above as prerequisites for being able to effectively wield “soft power” at the present moment.
Beyond its questionable foundations, the expansion of sanctions on Iran puts this US policy on a collision course with China who remains as an ally to Iran. Given President Trump’s mid-May “hat in hand” trip to Beijing in conjunction with Xi Jinping’s plans to visit DC in late September for a high stakes summit all indicates that right now may not be the best time to push the “China button”.
As a result, it is in connecting all of the “dots” of Trump administration actions that Bessent’s attempt to muster US “soft power” to strangle Iran with the “toughest economic sanctions in history” doesn’t have a high likelihood of success.
The rise of “sharp” power
What else gets lost in this current tough geopolitical moment for Secretary Bessent is just how much the world has changed since the end of the Cold War relative to an alarming level of complacency and arrogance in US foreign policy beliefs that arguably haven’t evolved much since the early 1990’s. This warped and outdated belief system still believes America carries as much soft power heft as it did in the mid 1980’s even with the Trump administration now acting as a “rogue state” relative to near- and longer-term US history.
In contrast to US geopolitical complacency, communist regimes of China and Russia have not stood still and have also gotten into the act of influencing state actions without necessarily having to fire a shot. But instead of a benign “soft power” approach designed to win over the “hearts and minds” of potential future allies with a sales campaign as the US had historically done for decades, China and Russia have been front footed since 2010 in seeking to raise their respective profiles on the global stage.
For China, spending tens of billions of dollars on an expanding and global network of Confucian Institutes (this program has been significantly scaled down in recent years…) and Russia’s global television network both serve as top-down complements to incessant activities focused on creating distraction and manipulation of their respective rivals’ citizen bases through social media penetration from the bottom up.
Here, importantly, communist propaganda efforts take full advantage of the open political and information environment of democracies while maintaining a repressive wall of keeping the “West” out of their own backyard. For China and especially Russia, such “sharp power” enables the authoritarians “to cut into the fabric of a society, stoking and amplifying existing divisions.” In contrast to “soft power” that aims to win the “hearts and minds of a people” as referenced above, the primary goal of “sharp power’ is to simply manipulate “target audiences by distorting the information that reaches them.”
From an ominous perspective, Christopher Walker and Jesica Ludwig argue in their Foreign Affairs article “The Meaning of Sharp Power” that indeed the goalposts have moved with regard to the “soft power” framework that seemed to reach a peak at the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1992. To Walker and Ludwig, “democracies’ complacency concerning the evolution of malign (communist), sharp power has been informed by their reliance on the soft power paradigm. The conceptual vocabulary that has been used since the Cold War’s end no longer seems adequate to the contemporary situation…”
Foreign Affairs: The Meaning of Sharp Power
Why “soft power” and more recently “sharp power” matter more today
As human civilization has evolved over thousands of years, “great” battles have largely determined the fate of empires, their boundaries and ultimately the durability of the culture that endured in the wake of epic conflict.
Consider the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC where Athenian forces were able to repel a Persian (modern day Iran) invasion by prevailing on the battlefield. But in so doing, the Athenian victory also preserved Greek culture and the processes for how democratic governance can work. Consider that Cleisthenes, the Athenian political leader that created democracy had done so in 500 BC just a decade before Marathon was fought. This allowed the culture and orthodoxy of ancient Greece to not only influence the subsequent Roman empire but also served as a catalyst for kick starting the Renaissance a thousand years later, which in turn, has had a profound impact on modernity.
So it is for good reason that history is often projected through such a lens. Great cultures build societies that end up clashing with other societies in war and the survivors of these conflicts through their culture end up writing the history that is told today.
But as wars became so destructive and horrific as what was experienced in both of the twentieth century’s world wars in conjunction with the proliferation of ever more devastating nuclear and hydrogen bombs coming out of WWII, the notion of war had become so lethal in scale that it posed a danger to mankind in general.
In querying Gemini on whether “soft and sharp power” are more important post WWII than before, its response was:
“Yes, soft and sharp power have become significantly more important in international relations post-WWII than they were before. While elements of these power dynamics have existed throughout human history, the structural shifts following World War II—such as the threat of nuclear annihilation, global democratization, and the information revolution—radically raised the costs of traditional “hard” military power, forcing states to compete using attraction and manipulation.”
Said differently, why soft and sharp power matters greatly today is because digital technology makes global communication instant, while direct military conflict between major nations is too dangerous and costly.
For readers interested in the nuances of the power dynamics referenced above, please see “Disinformation and other forms of ‘sharp power’ now sit alongside the ‘hard power’ of tanks and ‘soft power’ of ideas in policy handbook” in this link The Conversation,
The Conversation: Disinformation and other forms of ‘sharp power’
Bottom Line
In October of 2018 former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Richard Nephew penned “The Use and Misuse of Economic Statecraft – How Washington Is Abusing Its Financial Might” to express concern with how the US had been squandering the “soft power” advantage enjoyed by former Treasury Secretary James Baker in 1985 ever since. This alarming trend of complacency could arguably stem from multiple considerations including the US being the ultimate victor of the Cold War between the world’s two superpowers at the time. Additionally throw in a strong show of force that the US was able to produce in the first Gulf War in the early 1990’s. Fast forward two decades later and the US achieves energy independence at the same that it also demonstrates world leading prowess in the technology sector and it could be easy to get carried away with one’s own story.
But times have changed considerably since the early 1990’s when current US geopolitical orthodoxy was incepted and hasn’t evolved. Since then, China has become a superpower while Russia has also reemerged as a global player. Meanwhile, communism, which was on a backfoot in the early 1990’s has more recently gained the “initiative” from a global perspective.
It is against this backdrop of material global change not being met with any new vision from the US which gets to the heart of Messrs. Lew and Nephew’s above referenced paper. This construct of complacency existed before Donald Trump became President of the United States who has since exacerbated this disturbing trend. From Lew and Nephew’s piece:
“Although international concerns about Washington’s aggressive use of economic tools have been growing for decades, they have become even more acute under Trump. His administration is behaving as if the United States is immune to consequences, whether in the form of adversaries exerting economic pressure or allies rejecting the legitimacy of U.S. policy. This hubris is particularly evident in two areas: the administration’s protectionist trade policy and its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal…”
Foreign Affairs: The Use and Misuse of Economic Statecraft
Now consider the level of alarm being expressed by Jack Lew all the way back in October of 2018. One can only speculate as to what Lew would write today after knowing that the US just lost a conventional war with Iran and additionally lost its quasi-protector role in overseeing the Strait of Hormuz and the Mid East overall. This set back is more than military as it also destroys the protective military veil that the US has been able to provide for certain allies in the Mid East who have been big buyers of US Treasuries in return. This dynamic also serves to compromise American soft power which is happening while the “sharp power” of China and Russia is rising.
History provides a way out of “quagmire” in Iran
America’s setback in Iran and its collapse in being able to wield soft power currently does not have to spell the end of US global hegemony. Interestingly, the Roman Empire had overextended itself in modern day Iran in 117 AD when Emperor Hadrian assumed power. His predecessor, Trajan, had launched a massive invasion of the Parthian Empire that ended up becoming a logistical and financial nightmare. To combat this drain on the empire, Hadrian did the unthinkable and pulled his legions back to a more defensive posture and then signed a peace treaty to appease the region. The Roman Empire would live on for another 350 years after consolidating its power under Hadrian.
Historical irony is rich within this historical and contemporary framework as both Trajan and now Trump became overextended in Iran and both found it to be a logistical and financial nightmare, and both faced hard questions on how to exit. Unfortunately, for citizens today, the only answer for the problems to the empire caused by Trajan came from his successor and there are ample reasons to think that America’s current experience with Iran will follow a similar path where hopefully whoever follows Trump also understands ancient history.
For readers interested in this unique take on ancient Roman history as it applies to the contemporary history that is being made in Iran right now, please see from the Asiatic Global Order on Substack, “The Hadrian Blueprint: How Trump Can Look to Emperor Hadrian to Exit the Iranian Quagmire” which is well worth the read.
Substack: The Hadrian Blueprint — How Trump Can Look to Emperor Hadrian to Exit the Iranian Quagmire
To the extent that the type of enlightened response provided by Hadrian to an overextended Roman Empire is not part of America’s immediate future; expect stubborn inflation, higher US rates, turbulent equity markets in a world where US “soft power” arguably no longer exists.
Meanwhile, in a world of rising sharp power, expect the unexpected as global actors such as AIPAC, Russia and China have a captive interest in this year’s US mid-term elections and in an environment of ubiquitous social media such actors also have the means to influence its outcome. As a result; voters, whether you realize it or not, by voting you are a combatant in World War III that is being waged through “sharp power” this November in the US.