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Earlier today, I noticed Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias going back-and-forth on the inadequacy of the term "soft power." I vaguely remembered having written something on this at some point in the past, but didn't follow it up. Steve Benen, happily, has a better memory than I, and digs up this post where you all offered ideas for a new term. The best among them was "strategic power." But that wasn't good enough! I apparently concluded that the word "power," rather than its modifier, was the problem:
The problem isn't just the "soft" part, it's the "power." After 9/11, there really was a strain of foreign policy thinking where the simple demonstration of power was an end in itself. As Michael Ledeen put it, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." It's power for power's sake. And hard power will always make more sense in that framework.Insofar as liberals -- and moderates, and realists, and non-insane people -- have a response to this, it's not within the "power" framework. It's about goals, and ends, and strategies. It's "hard power" versus strategic goals, or the national interest. I'm not sure if there's a two word summation. Though, in the short-term, "Remember Iraq?" will probably work as well as anything else.Happily, I still agree with that. Unhappily, I can't remember things I wrote back in May.
