A new report by a nongovernmental coalition suggests that a “smart power” approach to international affairs is gaining traction and that there is bipartisan consensus on where to move forward. USIP, with its peacebuilding and conflict-management programs, is one form of smart power.
A report released this week by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) concludes that “a growing and broadening consensus has emerged that global development and diplomacy, alongside defense, are essential components of American national security.” The USGLC report, “Smart Power Agenda for Advancing America’s Global Interests,” says the question has shifted in recent years from whether to strengthen diplomacy and development to “how to best shape, elevate, and reform U.S. civilian agencies to advance America’s global interests.”
USGLC, a broad-based nongovernmental group favoring a smart-power approach to diplomacy and development, calls for further bipartisan efforts in six areas of consensus: strengthening civilian power; ensuring results-driven development; leveraging the involvement of the private sector; maintaining sufficient resources for the civilian side of national security; improving coordination among U.S. agencies; and establishing priorities amid limited resources.
The concept of “smart power” draws on a more subtle and more complete understanding of national power. In broad terms, “hard power” is a country’s military might and economic clout; “soft power” refers to other types of influence or persuasion—the attractiveness of a country’s ideals and values, its culture, its diplomacy and the like. Smart power is the idea of drawing on all sources of power to advance a nation’s influence and effectiveness in international affairs.
Harvard’s Joseph Nye, probably the leading conceptualizer of soft and smart power, put it this way in a 2007 U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) book, “Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World”: “Power is the ability to affect the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants….There are several ways to affect the behavior of others. You can coerce them with threats. You can induce them with payments. Or you can attract or co-opt them to want the outcomes that you want. This ability to influence others by attraction rather than coercion or payments is soft power.”
The work of the Institute—peacebuilding and conflict management—is one of the nation’s assets that produce soft and smart power. USIP is part of the often-mentioned national toolkit for dealing with security problems and conflicts abroad. More broadly, as Nye noted then, when the United States plays the role of peacemaker and conciliator, it constitutes an investment in our soft power.
USIP’s Pamela Aall, senior advisor for conflict prevention and management, agrees that these activities fall neatly into the category of smart-power options. They tend to be flexible and low cost, and they frequently emphasize building the capacity of people in countries in conflict or transition to avoid or reduce violence. As a nonpartisan, quasi-governmental institution, USIP has the ability to connect with civil society and others—both in the United States and in conflict zones—drawing together a range of interests in the pursuit of preventing deadly conflict. That convening power is another smart-power asset.
“Conflict management and peacebuilding are, in fact, the deployment of soft power and represent a special type of smart power,” says Aall. “They are not resource-heavy; they are resource smart. If you’re successful, you may avoid the need to deploy a lot of hard military assets or money….An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Even though support for a smart-power approach to foreign affairs is continuing to grow, as the USGLC report argues, the peacebuilding and conflict-management dimensions of soft and smart power have often been overlooked. That could lead to lost opportunities for employing this sort of smart power. Relative to their modest cost, peacebuilding and conflict management can deliver large returns in enhancing the nation’s security and its reputation and standing abroad. They help present to the world a fuller picture of the nature of American power—and, in the process, they increase it.
Further resources:
USIP Press’s “Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World”
An October 2007 USIP event delved into smart power and conflict management.
A June 2010 event looked at new “smart tools” for peacebuilding in Afghanistan.