Manly Men And Hard Power

By Cernig

Matt Y is back to the perennial problem of following framing that suits conservative narratives today. The particular instance for discussion is the "real men go to Tehran" mindset, whichg equates hard power with "real men" and characterizes those who prefer non-military alternatives as "flaccid" in the manliness department.

can we retire the term “soft power” already? I always feel that it’s been popularized not so much by Professor Nye as by deranged warmongers who like the idea of terming every alternative to militarism as somehow “soft,” fluffy, and weak. Soft Power is a good book, but it’s a bad coinage for an era in which national security issues have returned as a partisan political topic

And a very smart commenter, Brett, suggests:

In terms of Lakoffian framing, I’d suggest “broad power” to refer to cultural, economic, societal tactics and “narrow power” to refer to tactics that target buildings or individuals. Either could be more or less militaristic so the debate gets shifted away from the stupid (should we send “soldiers” or “peace keepers”?) to the relevant (is the cause of the problem localized or pervasive).

I like it. But if we really wanted to give the wingnuts conniptions we'd start referring to foreign policy that relies entirely on hawkish militarism as "man on man" power.

Comments

[Dave Schuler]

The comments reveal that they don't know what “soft power” means. Economic power isn't soft power; it's hard power.

Soft power is non-coercive power. It's the ability to set the agenda and having other people desire the same objectives that you do.

[zenpundit]

I’d suggest “broad power”

I think Gloria Steinem might object.

There's nothing wrong with "soft power". It's an accepted term and one used by ppl inside the Pentagon as well as outside of it.

[Cheryl Rofer]

As I said over at Kevin Drum's (this is the latest meme to overtake that portion of the blogosphere), why not just use whatever power makes sense in any given interaction with any given country and not worry so much about names?

It's silly to think that a diplomat or government official would think, let's see, we need 30% soft power, 30% military, 10% threat of military, and 30% just plain bribe. Something like that can be analyzed out of the results of negotiations, but it seems to me to be unuseful.

This business of terms tends to focus our minds on the wrong thing. "Soft power" may have been useful in contrasting a more general American influence with man-on-man action (love it!), but maybe we can get past that now.