Hard Truths About Soft Power
By Greg Delawie, Ambassador (ret)
What the heck is “soft power” anyway? Namby-pamby power? Woke power? Mickey Mouse power? And should we even care, if it’s just “soft?” You bet!
Soft power is why America’s Coca Cola – nothing but fizzy water with sugar and flavoring – is available for purchase, and desired by locals, in 200 countries around the world. Soft power is why 70 million foreigners visited the US in 2024, leaving behind $155 billion of their money. Soft power is why the American-designed Apple iPhone is the most-desired cell phone in the world, with 232 million examples sold last year alone. Soft power is why over one million foreign students attend the 5,000 colleges and universities around our country. And soft power is why more than forty countries joined the US in 1991 to drive Saddam Hussein’s soldiers out of Kuwait.
Soft power is a concept developed and popularized by Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye forty years ago. Nye describes it as the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. Getting what you want is a pretty important goal for any country, even for the United States, especially if you can get it without spending blood or treasure.
The more soft power a country has, the less money and effort it needs to spend to get stuff done. Nye distinguishes soft power from “hard power,” such as force of arms or payments. He adds that while soft power may not, by itself, be sufficient for a country to achieve its objectives, soft power can create an environment that will make other countries more likely to do what you want.
But where does soft power come from? Unfortunately, you can’t buy it at 7 – 11, or even as a 24-pack at Costco. No, it arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. A country’s soft power is enhanced when its policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of citizens of other countries.
What do you notice about these sources of soft power? Who is in control of them? Not governments. In the short term there is very little a country can do to increase its soft power. Think about culture, the first item on Nye’s list; this evolves over time in response to how individuals and communities react to cultural products or events. Political ideals are like an aircraft carrier, they don’t turn on a dime. And while a country can change policies pretty quickly, it may take quite a while before you persuade people in another country that these are the legitimate policies that enhance soft power.
A country can have a lot of soft power without much hard power. Think of Norway, a country of only 5.6 million people, which gained a reputation in international peacekeeping – and a lot of soft power – after it helped kick off the Oslo Accords in 1993 between Israel and the PLO.
President Biden understood soft power well, and talked about it frequently: when he said America would lead “not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example,” he was talking about soft power. As a diplomat for three decades, I relied frequently on American soft power to help me influence foreign officials to pursue the policies I was promoting.
Soft power has been an essential part of the US journey since WWII to become the richest and most powerful country in the world. This is pretty obvious to political scientists like Nye, to diplomats like me, and to American businesses operating abroad. However, President Trump and his sycophants either do not understand this or do not care. They have taken a flamethrower to American soft power, weakening our country at a breathtaking rate.
And while a country cannot do much in the short term to increase its soft power, it can decrease it almost instantly with foolish and inept policies.
Trump diminishes American soft power:
by threatening to attack NATO member Denmark’s territory of Greenland;
by threatening to incorporate NATO member Canada into the US;
by illegally deporting people to El Salvador in defiance of judicial rulings;
by lying constantly about almost everything;
by withholding arms from democratic Ukraine at the behest of the Russian dictatorship;
by imposing, then unimposing, then, imposing, etc., tariffs on imports, alienating nearly every country in the world in order to enrich his robber baron supporters who profit off insider trading in the markets from prior knowledge of the shifts;
and on, and on, and on.
How has the world reacted to this diminished American soft power? Well, our erstwhile allies Japan and South Korea have teamed up with enemy number one, China, to coordinate trade efforts in the face of Trump’s wild tariff announcements. Canadian liquor stores have pulled American whiskeys like Jack Daniels off their shelves in protest. Foreign visitors arriving by air in March 2025 declined by 10% from 2024 as travelers found other things to do with their travel money. The US dollar has declined by 5% against the euro.
And this is all just in the last few weeks.
What’s coming down the pike? China could start to sell its substantial ($759 billion) stock of US government debt, which would drive up American interest rates and inflation – which will already be under pressure due to Trump’s tariffs on everything. Foreign businesses and countries could shift away from the US dollar – which currently dominates international monetary exchanges – depriving the US of the billions of dollars it earns every year by being the world’s primary reserve currency. More boycotts of American products are a distinct possibility. More foreign travelers will no doubt decide to vacation elsewhere as the year progresses. Hundreds of thousands of full-paying foreign students will decide to attend colleges in countries with stronger democratic ideals.
Further off, countries that have lived with US security guarantees since WWII may even decide that, since our nuclear umbrella is looking like it has some holes, perhaps they should have their own nuclear weapons. This prospect should terrify us all. By antagonizing many other countries (except Russia of course), Trump makes our country weaker. His policies that damage the US economy may help China’s economy finally overtake ours.
The most important hard truth about soft power is that it is real power that provides substantial benefits to a country. When you give up soft power, you are giving up a lot of real power. Aspiring leaders like China are quietly applauding the President. Trump, with his incoherent trade and foreign policies, is not making America great again. He is making it weaker than it has been in decades.