One of the worst harms to the general public and policymakers alike comes from stripping opinions and ideas of their context and wielding them as though they were self-evident truths or universal laws and principles.

Such opinions gain immunity to criticism by being associated with well-known names, widely read reports, and quantified or other findings that can lend them a scientific aura.

One of the most bandied-about ideas of this sort is “soft power,” or the ability to persuade others, shape their preferences, win them over, or change their behaviour without resorting to force. The arts and culture are often cited as sources of soft power.

A state with a lot of soft power can presumably bring about the changes it wants in other countries without having to use its military superiority or its economic power, for example by placing restrictions on trade, investment, and the movement of labour between it and other countries, or by imposing commercial or financial sanctions.

As the US political scientist Joseph Nye has put it, a state can achieve its goals without coercing others, in other words by using its soft power.

However, Nye, who held positions in the US government and served as dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said that soft power is not always easy to use. Some types of soft power cannot be controlled by central government. The effects of soft power can also be indirect and can take a long time to develop or become strong enough to achieve the desired result.

Then there is the problem that while some forms of culture and the arts may be acceptable to many, they may simultaneously provoke aversion and condemnation among others. The controversial performances during the opening ceremony of this year’s Paris Olympics are a case in point.

I suggest we turn to the 14th-century Arab philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldoun for clarification on this point. In his famous Muqaddima (Prolegomena) Ibn Khaldoun wrote that “the defeated are forever eager to emulate the victor in his verse, his dress, his beliefs and all his other customs and ways of life.”  

According to Ibn Khaldoun, it is pointless to home in on soft power and isolate it from the other components of power, whose two main pillars have always been and will always be a strong and dynamic economy and a powerful and effective military apparatus.

It also goes without saying that no state or society can develop its economy and ensure its security and stability without mastering the science, technology, art and literature of its age. This means that soft power is not enough. Comprehensive power is the key. This is what countries should rely on, with all its constituent components combined and complementing each other. There is no replacing the hard with the soft when it comes to power.

Where I see the virtues of soft power extolled the most is in countries that are deficient in the two components of hard power. Without sufficient defensive power and economic robustness soft power is of little use. Soft power will only serve its purpose when the party it is addressed to understands the deterrent or, if need be, offensive power behind it and the credibility of its potential use.  

Soft power pundits have yet to tell us how it can be used on its own to change the behaviour of others who are unwilling to change. They have not shown us any scientific method to identify effects linked exclusively to soft power or to trace the efficacy of soft power as a tool from the moment it is activated to the moment it achieves its intended goal.

Patrick Porter, a professor of international security and strategy at the University of Birmingham in the UK, knows a thing or two about British soft power. Yet, he is not as keen as others to celebrate his country’s advancement to second place in the Brand Finance, a brand valuation consultancy, Global Soft Power Index, coming only after the US.

In a recent article on the subject, Porter observes that Britain’s “relative prestige in the world, like its material position, was stronger in 1956 than in 2024.” His choice of 1956 is not random. That was the year of the Tripartite Aggression, or Suez Crisis, the outcome of which made it explicit that dominance in the international arena had shifted for good from Britain to the US.

President Dwight Eisenhower, the US president at the time, used his country’s military and economic assets to “softly persuade” Britain to stop its attack on Egypt.

Britain’s heritage buildings and museums continue to exhibit its rich history and culture. Its considerable soft power is visible in the football arenas, on the small and big screen, and in the printed and online press and other media. But, according to Porter, in the context of the nuts and bolts of the international balance of power, all this is no more than “psychological balm” at a time when “our [British] material existence is under strain.”

In the competition between nations, it is comprehensive power that counts. The collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s without a single shot being fired and despite its formidable military machine is an edifying lesson.

The Soviet Union was missing an important component of power, namely a robust, competitive, and advanced economy. This was due to policies that disincentivised or eliminated competition and private sector initiative and suppressed creativity and innovation.

Did the Soviets lose their power of nuclear deterrence? Did the Bolshoi Ballet lose its international fame? The answer to these questions is no, but power has to be comprehensive if it is to be power in the real sense. If one of its essential components is missing, be it hard or soft, it stops working.

This is the context that informed former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi’s recent warning to the European Union that it is facing an “existential threat.” This is the gist of the recent report he oversaw on the future of European competitiveness. It said that if the EU does not make the investments that will accelerate innovation and development to drive growth, and if it does not invest in new and renewable energy and in developing future industries, defence, and promoting digital transformation, its future will be at risk.

People in the Global South may think that Europe already has more than enough wealth, progress, and freedom. But as the 10th-century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi observed, “I have seen no flaw in capable men such as the failure to reach for perfection.”

If that is the case, what are we to say of those who gave up halfway in the race of nations? What about those who have not yet started on the race, and instead spend their energies on the search for ancestral roots and ancient glories or merely on bemoaning the fact that they have missed the train of progress?

 

This article also appears in Arabic in Wednesday’s edition of Asharq Al-Awsat.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 3 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly