{"id":10679,"date":"2015-08-03T08:32:46","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T13:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10679"},"modified":"2015-08-03T08:32:46","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T13:32:46","slug":"the-soft-power-hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10679","title":{"rendered":"The Soft Power Hoax"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/08\/02\/the-soft-power-hoax\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Soft Power Hoax<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>U.S. officials love\u00a0the idea of \u201csoft power,\u201d a concept that applies non-violent means \u2013 from propaganda to culture \u2013 to induce foreign countries to conform to Washington\u2019s wishes. But the arrogance of the approach has alienated, rather than attracted, many people around the world, writes Mike Lofgren.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>A recurrent buzz phrase of the Washington mandarinate in the last two decades has been \u201csoft power.\u201d The term was coined by Joseph Nye, a Harvard academic, in his 1990 book,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Bound-Lead-Changing-Nature-American\/dp\/0465007449\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1438441322&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=bound+to+lead+the+changing+nature+of+american+power\"><em><u>Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power<\/u><\/em><\/a>. What he meant by the term is that \u201cwhen one country gets other countries to want what it wants [it] might be called co-optive or soft power in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Soft power he defined as the putatively attractive political, social and cultural traits of a country that induce admiration in a target people, and, presumably, a desire both to emulate those traits and to willingly comply with the wishes of the country projecting the soft power.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/clinton-benghazi.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6933\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/clinton-benghazi-300x206.jpg?55ac53\" alt=\"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before Congress on Jan. 23, 2013, about the fatal attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11. 2012. (Photo from C-SPAN coverage)\" width=\"300\" height=\"206\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The term has gotten a workout by American politicians and national security bureaucrats, particularly since the manifest failure of military power to make Iraqis love us. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has used the term,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/speeches\/speech.aspx?speechid=1199\"><u>saying<\/u><\/a>\u00a0he would like to augment U.S. soft power by \u201ca dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of\u00a0national security\u00a0\u2013\u00a0diplomacy,\u00a0strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action and economic reconstruction and development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Soft Power Hoax U.S. officials love\u00a0the idea of \u201csoft power,\u201d a concept that applies non-violent means \u2013 from propaganda to culture \u2013 to induce foreign countries to conform to Washington\u2019s wishes. But the arrogance of the approach has alienated, rather than attracted, many people around the world, writes Mike Lofgren. A recurrent buzz phrase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[6963,643,655,658,7803,7804,865],"class_list":["post-10679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-consortium-news","tag-power","tag-propaganda","tag-psychology","tag-soft-power","tag-soft-power-hoax","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10680,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10679\/revisions\/10680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}