WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 05: Supporters of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAid) … [+] rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on February 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. USAid employees and supporters protested against the Trump Administration’s sudden closure of USAid resulting in the canceling aid work, conflict prevention and foreign policy work around the world as well as potentially laying off thousands of employees. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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Over the past few weeks, I feel like I have been watching Back to the Future: The Soft Power Prequel.
The Trump Administration has undone, with a breathtaking reversal, almost a century of U.S. thinking on foreign policy.
While soft power is suddenly the topic of the day, being discussed everywhere as a traditional cornerstone of America’s geopolitics, our current strategy is almost unrecognizable.
American diplomacy has gone from A.I. models back to Ford Model A’s.
Gone, Baby, Gone
Gone are attempts to promote America’s broad agenda of progress around the globe through investments in infrastructure, education, health care, and democratic institutions.
We are now being told to believe in an America that can chart its course selfishly—from Greenland to Panama to Canada to Gaza—almost entirely on the basis of a surreal mixture of Manifest Destiny, gunboat diplomacy, and golf resort and tournament planning.
With the wave of a hand—or, to be more precise, the tapping of a few overnight posts on social media—American political horizons are being remade in ways that are petty and absurd.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, an ally and duly elected leader of a nation under attack by a dictatorship, disagreed with the U.S. president, so he was branded a dictator himself.
The Gulf of Mexico became the “Gulf of America.” (Since when was that idea on the agenda of any political party? Never. It was regarded as nothing more than a lame joke by the very Mississippi legislator who proposed the idea in 2012.)
Rather than building goodwill, deepening friendships, and informally collaborating with like-minded nations, Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the United States Agency for International Development, obliterated the U.S. Institute for Peace, African Development Foundation, and Inter-American Foundation, insulted America’s neighbors, and lectured condescendingly to European allies.
In doing so, he has diluted America’s wellspring of soft power and called its tools and very existence into question. We are, in one sense, back to square one.
I will unpack and reflect on the many aspects of these developments through a series in the coming weeks.
Good Ol’ Fashioned Soft Power, Here and Abroad
Soft power, by definition, is the ability to attract others to one’s cause without the brute force of coercion, legal requirements, or explicit economic incentives.
In the words of renowned political scientist Joseph Nye, the father of the concept, it stems from the overall, loosely defined desirability of a country’s political ideals, culture, and moral authority as expressed in its policies writ large.
America has had a longstanding self-interest in being a stable democracy, for example, because the attractiveness of its model of government confers advantages. It can lead others to adopt and sustain democracies, which are less likely to start wars with each other. Promote more democracies created by soft power, more peace.
As I have written elsewhere, soft power is not just a nation-to-nation matter. It pervades our daily lives and professional discourse, and it defines our identity within our borders with equal and sometimes greater force.
If This Is How You Treat Your Friends …
In this light, America is shooting itself in the foot by suddenly reversing course on its foreign aid, cancelling long-standing contractual commitments, stranding life-saving products, and levelling accusations of pervasive corruption without proof.
Reneging on commitments to friends is a great way to lose friends, erode the ability to secure future agreements, and diminish the ability to make new friends.
Is this the American way of doing business that we want other nations, much less our own citizens, to emulate?
Would we want other nations to, say, agree to help us with global sanctions against a common enemy and then wake up one morning and decide—on the basis of no shared hard evidence—that they changed their minds?
Or, would we want other nations in a time of war to commit to share sensitive intelligence with us about weapons of mass destruction proliferation and then decide that, yah, they just changed their mind on a whim?
Of course not. Allies don’t do this. Honoring commitments is a norm that transcends any one agreement. Providing proof, not just allegations, when problems arise is common for fair resolutions, diplomacy, and common sense.
As Nature Abhors a Vacuum, So Does Soft Power
If the US is not using its soft power effectively on the global stage, one can be assured that other nations, especially China, will be more than willing to step into the void.
After all, the Chinese may not be paragons of democracy, but at least they honor their commitments.
We are now playing with fire abroad and at home.
Is the “American way of doing business” now headed toward a Trumpian world of baseless allegations, court-clogging lawsuits, bribery, unchecked conflicts of interest, and unpaid bills?
Are these the models of capitalism or democracy we want to prevail abroad or at home?
Soft Power as Soulcraft
The concept of “statecraft as soulcraft” was first conceived by Aristotle and has been a staple of political thought ever since, especially conservative political thought.
The idea: leaders have a duty not just to make policy and strategy decisions but also to shape the moral character of their citizens so they can make wise decisions in the gray areas not covered by laws and policies.
One could as easily say that soft power is a form of soulcraft, a way of shaping our national character that precedes and, at times, supersedes our formal decision-making.
A nation’s soul, in its own way, can be inspired and lifted up by norms of soft power, or debased and swept aside.
President Trump’s actions are touching more than specific agencies or policies, they are affecting the very fabric of the American character.
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Publish date : 2025-02-22 00:50:00
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