Earlier, I asked for a better term than "soft power." Commenter Micah suggested "strategic power," which sounds about right. Meanwhile, CSIS actually has a program -- run by Joseph Nye and Richard Armitage -- on "smart power." Reading through all this, though, I'm not sure the term can be saved. 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.
