Yeah! Soft Power is what we need. Look how much success India has had with it!!

Warner Todd Huston on December 1, 2008 at 8:59 AM

Condi Rice’s dabbling in soft power with Hizbollah, Iran, and North Korea has worked so well, hasn’t it?

Wethal on December 1, 2008 at 9:05 AM

Just what we need. A foreign policy “experiment” in Kumbaya diplomacy at the most perilous times in our nation’s history.

Buy Danish on December 1, 2008 at 9:07 AM

Well, the Obama team can say they’re going in a different direction, which may be true or it may be just something to keep the left quiet. How this “soft power” stategerie works the first time Iran, Russia or China get belligerent over Israel, the Ukraine or Taiwan, or when the first Mumbai happens on Barack’s watch remains to be seen.

Obama and his advisers obviously remember Bill Clinton’s disastrous two years after he first took office and don’t want to repeat that; we’ll see if they can remember far enough back to Jimmy Carter’s horrific four years of “soft power” foreign policy.

jon1979 on December 1, 2008 at 9:15 AM

Tim Zank on December 1, 2008 at 9:01 AM

As it stands now, you have helicopter pilots negotiating tribal disputes in some combat zones. The money shouldn’t come at the expense of the defense budget, but we NEED more foreign service operatives to do things like put together reconstruction authorities and negotiate and smooth over transitions of power in combat regions. To ignore that need is to ignore our security requirements. Again though, I stress, not at the expense of defense

ernesto on December 1, 2008 at 9:19 AM

Obama should have read John Allen’s column in letting the Vatican take care of “soft power” for him.

But alas, why correct the Messiah. He is convinced of His own Omniscience.

BKennedy on December 1, 2008 at 9:29 AM

The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats useful idiots and aid workers targets…

…How terrorists see the world.

Obama spent his whole life dealing with nothing but guilt-riddled Westerners. He and his moonbat followers have absolutely no idea that there’s a big, scary world out there that couldn’t possibly give less of a rat’s ass about their angst.

logis on December 1, 2008 at 10:08 AM

The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

What does this mean? Sending unarmed civilians into places like Somalia with no military protection is a seriously flawed defense strategy. Why not just put targets on their backs too Barack??

Soft Power = Soft Target

Dollayo on December 1, 2008 at 11:12 AM

…and liberals everywhere shudder in a collective orgasm as the pussification of America advances at light speed.

Wyznowski on December 1, 2008 at 12:03 PM

It took Bush I sixteen years to defeat a Clinton but he finally has. Obama’s foreign policy will be a lot like Bush the elder. Funny it is also Bush I’s triumph over his son.

LevStrauss on December 1, 2008 at 12:15 PM

Of all the empty and fatuous (part empty, part fatuous) “concepts” put forth by the lib side on foreign policy, “soft power” is the silliest. No “there” there.

We naturally use all tools at our disposal in all situations we confront. Some “tools” don’t exist – you’re not going to magically eliminate the ignorance and anti-Americanism (but I repeat myself) of almost anyone around the world through available tools (just look at the Beltway media). The opinion surveys in Indonesia pre/post-tsunami aid actually demonstrate this (as well as further debunk the “soft” power gibberish – it was HARD power, used for humanitarian purposes). The US has, at the level of large naval formations, down to small ground force detachments, been doing humanitarian work for a long time.

And no, ernesto, we DON’T need beefed up aid or reconstruction activities. I worked in that effort, pre-Iraq, and in a “softer” side of the Iraqi adventure itself. The aid reforms pushed by the Bush team years back were the first, most important reforms in the field for a long time – they emphasized results, and tying aid to actual potential for improvement. The calls for “more cow bell” by many in uniform are ill-considered attempts to relieve the military of tasks they do better than others, at least in key conflict areas, and often a transparent attempt to avoid accountability. For the millionth time – the worst parts of Iraq didn’t settle and turn because of nifty or courageous reconstruction efforts (those had already been tried, in many cases several times), but because we finally re-took the military initiative and changed both the reality and perception of dominance.

But the bottom line is that “soft” power doesn’t exist, as a separate set of tactics or tools than those already long used. One reason combat forces have in many cases been better aid workers than those elements created for the task are because they represent power and order, not just $$$$. You can’t replicate the impact of a good civil affairs effort, embedded in a combat force in a conflict situation, with USAID-funded NGOs or intrepid State employees on their own. Tweaking reconstruction/aid mechanisms or budgets will not give us any new or additional power, and will not be material to our national security outcomes.

IceCold on December 1, 2008 at 12:30 PM