Soft Power

James Harkin, The Guardian:

Speak softly, and carry a big carrot. For decades, even Europe's friends chuckled at this parody of its timid approach to foreign policy adventures. In its negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, however, Europe has been promoting the embrace of "soft power" as an exciting new tool for diplomacy.

Soft power is to the American military machine what the idea of the new man is to traditional masculinity. It is, according to the new European catechism, a more civilised way of doing things - one based on rational argument, proper procedure and bureaucratic haggling. In an only partly light-hearted article for the journal Foreign Policy in 2004, one analyst identified Europe as the world's first "soft" or "metrosexual" superpower. READ MORE

"Metrosexuals", he argued, "always know how to dress for the occasion (or mission). Spreading peace across Eurasia serves US interests, but it's best done by donning Armani pinstripes rather than US army fatigues."

The idea of "soft power", however, is not a European but an American invention, and it is not just about wearing Armani suits but about winning hearts and minds through cultural influence. For over a decade, Joseph Nye, a professor of international relations at Harvard and one of America's leading foreign policy thinkers, has been arguing that America should devote more time to exporting its culture - its language, values and brands - and promoting the country as a beacon of prosperity and openness. Watching the progress of the war on terror, Nye has argued that America's military belligerence after 9/11 was beginning to suffocate the soft power that traditionally made it attractive to foreigners.

A funny thing has happened to Nye's idea, however, on its way into the contemporary political vocabulary. In the past few years, Europe has quietly been rebranding itself to make political capital out of global anti-Americanism. Where America is deemed to have reverted to an evangelical Protestantism underwritten by George Bush, Europe offers itself as a secular oasis. Where America's armies strut around the world in search of a Pax Americana, Europe has borrowed Nye's idea to present itself as a connoisseur in the art of soft power. For the past few years, bogged down in an intractable war in Iraq, America has been happy to let Europe have its way over Iran. It has politely exited the ring, occasionally cheering on the efforts of Britain, France and Germany to find a diplomatic solution.

The problem is that there is little in the way of common culture and identity to which Europe can encourage others to aspire. Europe's "softness", for what it is worth, derives from its skills as a negotiator.

And, so far, its negotiations with Iran have not been going too well. A cynic might conclude that, rather than skilfully massaging the situation with its soft power, Europe is merely a softy, whose whispered overtures to the Iranians depend on having America's bad cop in the background. Stick with us, European leaders have seemed to be saying to the Iranians for the past two years - you wouldn't want to be left alone with my hot-headed friend across the water. But, very soon, it looks like they might.