Battleangel

On the decline of America’s soft power (”Cultural Power” or “attraction”). John Brown argues along the lines of Joseph Nye that power comes in three rough varieties. Namely “coercion,” “payments” and “attraction.” The latter is clearly the most elusive, underrated and what the US is quickly running out of. Furthermore, he argues that the reasons for this decline can be be found in aggressive foreign policy, overt hypocrisy and the “plain folks” rule. Apparently kids these days don’t care for brush cutting.

Meanwhile, other countries—notably China—are filling the vacuum created by America’s disappearing soft power with information and exchange programs. And popular culture from other countries—films made in India’s Bollywood, manga comics from Japan —is providing an alternative to America’s pop dominance around the world.

Our loss of soft power is already having negative economic consequences, and our ability to influence events through our policies—now so discredited—is increasingly limited. As a former Reagan administration official mugged by Bush reality, Doug Bandow, puts it in his “A Foreign Policy of Fools,” “Every day, America is more active in the world. At the same time, it is ever more alone.”

Ironically, the concept of soft power is one that the elites either despise, don’t care a whit for or just don’t understand. You just don’t learn that sort of thinking inside of doctrinal bubble in which leaders are spawned and protected. Well, good riddance to US hegemony. Too bad you never understood what you had.