Soft power can be described as being able to co-opt and attract rather than coerce. The objective is to shape other people's preferences through attraction and appeal. Diplomacy is a form of soft power since Soft power employs the use of foreign policies, political values and culture instead of force which are key aspects in diplomacy. Joseph Nye introduced this concept of soft power in the late 1980s. He defined soft power as an essential means to attract (rather than force) other nations to meet interests. There are three categories of people who hold a different view on power. They are categorized as realist, neorealist, and idealist. The realist holds the belief that the struggle for power must culminate in war. They believe in the use of military capabilities, manpower, and material possessions to coerce others to agree with them. The neorealist view is known as the omnipresence of power. Although they appreciate that soft power does work, they argue that hard power is more effective compared to soft power. The last category is that of the idealist. These people absolutely agree on the ideal way of practicing soft power which is to attract a nation by spreading cultural values, making an ideological appeal, making a nation draw closer.
There were so many instances when soft power played a significant role in various countries in the world (Dutta, 2016). The first example was the Soviet Union when they competed with the United States during the Cold War. In 1945, they managed to attract many Europeans to resist Hitler. They also employed a lot of public diplomacies, for instance, promoting their culture, sponsoring nuclear protests, youth organizations, and peace movements but it lacked popular culture hence impeding the ability to compete with the U.S. Another example is when Egypt attempted to use soft power as a tool of soft power. Gamal Abdel Nasser who was the Egyptian ruler trained so many teachers and sent them all over the Arab world to teach anti-Zionism and anti-colonialism. Also in Cuba, thousands of medical practitioners were dispatched abroad for cultural diplomacy by the Fidel Castro regime’s medical internationalism programme. There was also China’s Confucius Institutes that aimed at strengthening China’s soft power abroad. The most recent is Turkey’s immigration diplomacy that was sponsoring the immigration of Imams across North America and Europe. Finally, Pope John II Poland visit in 1973 influenced events against the communist government of Poland leading to atheism.
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Diplomacy and the use of force interrelate in practice in countering the principal threats identified in the national strategies of Trump, Obama and Bush 43 administrations in that all these administrations held the belief that threats of force are effective in diplomacy. They also understood that efforts to deal with conflicts by only peaceful diplomacy rarely succeed, but instead, it leads damaging of interests of one nation. America has been employing these two instruments since the Korean War. The strategies employed in the use of diplomacy and coercive force require the boldness to make threats of force that must be sufficiently potent and sufficiently credible in the eyes of the enemies to convince them to act against your interest or else what has been done is reversed. There are two significant examples where both diplomacy and the use of coercive force had been employed by the U.S government to achieve her goal.
One was during the Persian Gulf Crisis when the U.S military demonstrated deployment at the gulf and readiness to use force if need be. However, Saddam Hussein did not comply with the demand that he removes his troops from Kuwait and hence he had to be expelled using force. The second scenario concerns Bush and Reagan administrations which tried to persuade Manuel Noriega who was a Panamanian dictator to leave office. They threatened to use power if there was such a necessity. However, their efforts were futile, and therefore President Bush had no other alternative apart from sending compact forces to Panama with an order to capture Noriega. During the reign of President Obama, diplomacy was highly advocated for diplomacy over war. During the Iran American crisis, he gave the Iran speech recalling John F Kennedy words in 1963 when he said "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough-more than enough of war and hate the oppression." However, after six years Obama saw the need to use force as the only resort to the conflicts. President Trump, on the other hand, believes in the use of force though he has in many instances employed diplomacy.
To achieve security, the Department of Defense employs both natural and social instruments of national power to realize the U.S national security goals. These instruments include the military, intelligence, economic, diplomatic, informational, and economic and law enforcement strategies which are a combination of soft and hard powers. The financial, economic, and military instruments of national power portray the hard power capacity of the U.S while the informational and diplomatic instruments of national power depict the soft power capacity of the U.S. On the other hand, the intelligence and the legal and law enforcement instruments of power can be categorized as either soft or hard power capability. Previously, the Department of Defense relied mostly on four instruments, that is the diplomatic, economic, military and informational instruments. But after an attack on 11 th September 2001, they realized the need to implement all the national power and influence elements. Thus today and in the future, the financial, law enforcement operations and activities and the intelligence are being used in combination with the essential elements and instruments of power.
The primary objective in the arena of nuclear defense is the prevention of nuclear war which is a great threat to the United States existence (Tsygankov, 2013). To prevent and control nuclear war call for efforts to prevent nuclear-related attacks. It also involves the prevention of dangerous situations from occurring to minimize the need to use nuclear weapons by other nations against the United States. Some of the situations experienced in the past include massive nonnuclear attacks, but the United States was keen to seek the extension of nuclear deterrence to stop such attacks. Continuation of deterrence to prevent nonnuclear attacks which are massive usually suffers from fundamental values' tension. Eliminating this tension is something next to impossible so long as nuclear weapons are in existence and there is a possibility of war. However, reducing conventional invasion risk can cut the tension to some extent. Also, to minimize the tension further, the size of the forces of this nuclear can be reduced on both sides.
The main objective in the arena of cyber defense is primarily to enhance collaboration between the CSCSS, and private inter-agency partnership with an aim effectively addressing the international issues of cybersecurity. To achieve the objective, there is need to leverage the use of various resources and intense research which bringing the cybersecurity question to focus on critical issues, infrastructures as well as coordinated responsive and preventive activities. The goal is to strengthen cyberspace at all level; organizational, entities, national and international levels. Key information elements and critical infrastructure needs to be protected since they are crucial. The idea is to ensure effective service delivery and national security to avoid loss through individuals who spy against the government to obtain sensitive information and intellectual property that can damage economic and national security hence minimizing the vulnerability of national central infrastructure to cyber terrorism, warfare and other threats. Other objectives include protecting government ICTs, promoting resilience and security in the business sector, and reinforcing prevention, reaction, recovery, detection, response, analysis and research skills to cope with cyber delinquency and terrorism, sensitizing the private sector, the public as well as the citizens of cyberspace risks.
These tools have been successful to a greater extent since there is evidence of a reduction in the rates of cyber-crimes and also the use of destructive nuclear weapons in wars. However, there is still more that needs to be done since the terrorists and other enemies of national progress and development are always innovating new methods to commit crimes at advanced technologies.
The most important recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission include the recommendation to strengthen the Alliances to defeat global terrorism and prevent attacks. For a long time, the United States has been using deterrence as a defense strategy, but it has lost its significance since Russia began to make its nuclear arsenal. Richard K. Betts argues that deterrence is an illusion and may not be practical in deterring some types of aggressors and aggression. Strengthening alliances will be useful since the forward-deployed forces in the U.S provide tangible bonds for a specific purpose. Again it would be very unwise to loosen bonds at such a time when China and Russia are flexing their muscles. Another important recommendation is to grow the economy through trade and free markets. Today a countries power is measured based on its economic power. Building the economy would, therefore, be a powerful instrument of power to ensure security is guaranteed. There is also a recommendation to transform the National security Institutes to meet the new challenges in the 21 st century. There are so many changes in the way of doing things in various countries. Advancement in technology has contributed significantly to these changes. There is, therefore, a serious need to transform the national security institutes in the way that they meet the standard of this new era. Finally, the need to work with others cannot be underestimated. Working together will help to prevent conflicts as well as enhance conflict resolutions, conflict intervention, and post-conflict and preconstruction.
In conclusion, diplomacy is a form of soft power, and it is very effective. Since diplomacy is all about international matters, there is a need to ensure there is sovereignty in foreign affairs — the "Post American World" advocates for this sovereignty. Russia's strong soft power is strong but again limited in that its values are not universal, their economy is semi-periphery and not international, they face a lot of mistrust from the West, and also they are facing great security challenges which they are addressing using hard power instead of sot power.
References
Dutta A (2016). The concept of soft power: A critical analysis . International affairs forum
Tsygankov A (2013). Moscow’s soft power strategy . Current history
