This article is from the cover package in the Fall 2024 print issue, featuring letters from thinkers around the world. Read all nine letters here.
What would you want to tell the next U.S. president? FP asked nine thinkers from around the world to write a letter with their advice for him or her.
Dear Madam or Mr. President,
As president, you will need to invest in U.S. soft power, the ability to get what we want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. When I first published an article on soft power in Foreign Policy in 1990, the concept was new, but the behavior is as old as human history. While the hard power of coercion usually prevails in the short run, soft power is essential for the long-term success of foreign policy. As Talleyrand, Napolean’s foreign minister, is alleged to have said, “You can do everything with bayonets, except sit on them.”
A country’s soft power comes primarily from three sources: its culture; its political values, such as democracy and human rights; and its policies when they are seen as legitimate, because they are framed with awareness of others’ interests. How a government behaves at home in its practice of democracy, in international institutions and alliances where it consults others, and in setting foreign-policy goals such as promoting human rights and responding to global public problems such as climate change determines whether other countries find us attractive or not.
Soft power is the other side of the coin. It is a force multiplier. When you are attractive, you can economize on sticks and carrots. The Roman Empire was maintained by its military but also by the attraction of Roman culture. The United States won the Cold War because of its military and economic strength but also through the attraction of its ideas and values. As the Norwegian scholar Geir Lundestad put it, Cold War Europe was divided into a Soviet and an American empire, but the American one was an “empire by invitation,” while the Soviets had to invade Hungary and Czechoslovakia to maintain theirs.
Today, Russia possesses very little soft power, particularly after its invasion of Ukraine, but China is investing heavily in its soft power. As I describe in my memoir, A Life in the American Century, I developed the term as an analytic concept to round out my description of U.S. power, which many people thought was in decline. Little did I imagine that in 2007, President Hu Jintao would tell the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that China had to increase its investment in soft power. And toward that end, China has spent tens of billions of dollars on Confucius Institutes and its Belt and Road aid program as well as international broadcasting and communications.
China has had mixed returns on its investment. Recent polls have asked citizens of other countries which foreign countries they find attractive. The Pew Research Center surveyed 24 countries last year and reported that majorities in most countries found the United States more attractive than China, with Africa the only continent where the results were close. More recently, Gallup surveyed 133 countries and found that the United States was more attractive in 81 and China in 52. Polls show that U.S. soft power declined in the Donald Trump years. All countries have a degree of national pride, but too narrow a nationalism reduces attraction to others. “America First” can imply that all others’ interests come second. Polls show that U.S. soft power recovered when President Joe Biden reaffirmed our alliances and participation in multilateral institutions.
A few years ago, China’s foreign minister invited me to dinner and asked me how his country could increase its soft power. I told him that he faced two problems that would be difficult to overcome. In Asia, China has territorial disputes with neighbors such as India, Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, which reduce its attraction in those countries. And in the democracies of Europe, the Americas, and Australia, China’s insistence on tight party control over civil society diminishes its attraction. A great deal of a country’s soft power is generated by its civil society, and governments must be careful not to try to overly control it. However, this is difficult for leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping to accept.
Over the years, U.S. soft power has had its own ups and downs. In the 1960s, our cities were burning, and we were mired in Vietnam War protests. Bombs exploded in universities and government buildings. The National Guard killed student protesters at Kent State University. We witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and the flames were fanned by demagogues such as George Wallace. Yet within a decade, a series of reforms passed Congress, and the honesty of Gerald Ford, the human rights policies of Jimmy Carter, and the optimism of Ronald Reagan helped restore our attractiveness.
The United States, unpopular in many countries during the Vietnam and Iraq wars, found itself deficient again when Trump proclaimed his America First policy. But even during the Vietnam War, when crowds marched around the world to protest U.S. policies, they did not sing the communist “Internationale” but “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. Presidents must remember that an open civil society that allows protest can be a soft-power asset—even if it is politically uncomfortable.
As president, you must remember that government can try to promote culture but it must not try to control it. Invest in the Voice of America and cultural exchange programs, but keep them free even when they annoy you. Political values attract only if a country lives up to them. Preaching democracy abroad will be judged by how well it is practiced at home. Otherwise, statements are dismissed as propaganda and hypocrisy. And definitions of the national interest that open the possibility of joint gains make them more legitimate in the eyes of others.
At a recent meeting of foreign-policy experts, a prominent European told me that he used to worry about a decline in U.S. hard power but now he worried about what was happening internally. He was concerned that our political polarization would affect the soft power that underlies U.S. foreign policy. I told him that the political problem was real but American culture has sources of resilience that go back to our Puritan and Enlightenment origins. We have never been perfect, but our culture encourages us to keep striving to improve. The past 70 years have seen many cycles in the view that the United States is in decline. Pessimists in the past have often underestimated our cultural roots and resilience.
As president, you must remember that the open values of our democratic society and the right to peaceful protest are among the greatest sources of U.S. soft power. Even when mistaken government policies reduce our attractiveness, the ability of American society to criticize itself and correct our own mistakes can make us attractive to others at a deeper level. Protect that ability! It is a source of hope.