Losing Soft Power in Hard Places

This article came out two months ago in Progress in Development Studies

Abstract: The US choice of a misdirected target of priority concern, a ‘War on Terror’, combined
with the use of hard power to the absolute detriment of soft power has undermined the enlightenment values that had begun to fl ourish in the form of humanitarian policies, values and laws which could have informed international cooperation and development in the twenty-first century. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has had serious implications for humanitarianism worldwide, has provided a huge propaganda victory to Islamic extremists, and has diverted international attention and resources
from major humanitarian emergencies elsewhere and from today’s most signifi cant threat to human survival, global climate change.


Key Excerpt:
President Bush initiated the war on terror primarily
through the use of hard military power.
The Bush strategy played into the hands of
their extremist opponents by the adoption of
such an approach. Other options were available
which could have a positive effect on
improving people’s livelihoods. Members of
the British Medical Association proposed in
2007 that the UK could purchase the Afghan
farmers poppy harvest as there was a shortage
of diamorphine in the UK, an essential drug
for pain relief, in particular for terminally ill
patients (The Independent, 24 January 2007).
The alternative strategy proposed by some
British politicians of eradicating the poppy
production of poor Afghan farmers because
the Taliban might reap some benefits got
the reality entirely the wrong way around.
The Western forces in Afghanistan, working
through their local allies, have failed to deliver
the proclaimed benefi ts. Poppies give a good
income and other potential crops do not.
People living in poverty need money to sustain
their livelihoods, feed, clothe and educate their
children, and pay for health care when they are
sick. Growing poppies for opiate production
meets those needs. Better that the crop goes
for medical purposes rather than fuelling the
illegal drug habits of the underclass in the
wealthiest countries.
A second good example of the better use
of soft power is the energy power policy in Iraq
itself. Power facilities are centralized and offer
a prime target for radical opposition forces.
Once destroyed, the whole community suffers
from the loss of electricity. The only place with
a backup generator often is the local mosque
and this is where many gather when deprived
of power at home. There, the infl uence of
extremist Islamic politicians can be exerted.
An alternative policy would be for generators
to be given to local communities for them to
protect and furnish their basic need for power
in a country of severe weather conditions, requiring
air conditioning in extreme heat and
heating in the extreme cold. In sum, concern
for peoples’ welfare and feelings should have
guided policy. Disregarding enlightenment
values and principles justifi ed by the needs of
a war has proved counterproductive in the
extreme. This is not to suggest that a military
effort is not required in certain circumstances
but these need to be strictly confi ned and
international legitimacy is of paramount importance
and that means United Nations
Security Council approval if the international
community is to invade a country. Hard power
and soft power must complement each other;
they are not alternative strategies.
How is it possible that hard-won enlightenment
values appear to have been lost so easily?
Richard Jackson (2006) has studied this topic,
asking how people in the US and the UK could
come so quickly to accept the use of methods
previously regarded as unacceptable. His conclusion
is that both sides in the war on terror,
the US administration and Al Qaeda:
are employing exactly the same discursive
strategies: both appeal to victim-hood and
grievance, both enlist religion as supreme
justifi cation, both frame the struggle as good
versus evil, both demonise and dehumanize
the other and both claim the mantle of a just/
holy war/jihad. The result of this discursive
mirroring is predictable: the killing of civilians
without pity or remorse, whether by suicide
bombers hoping to force the US military out
of Iraq and Saudi Arabia or by US helicopter
gun-ships attacking insurgents on the streets
of Fallujah. (Jackson, 2006: 183)
For the US, a post-9/11 sense of vulnerability,
combined with its self-image of global
dominance led to the US adopting a policy of
muscular unilateralism (Barakat, 2005). In a
globalized world, the best chance for defeating
terrorism and avoiding turning back the
tide of progressive civil liberties is gaining the
widest support through multilateral policies
(Patman, 2006). Michael Mann has captured
the situation thus:
The new militarism has the customary
strengths and weaknesses of militarism –
power but not authority, ruthless arrogance
leading to overconfi dence, eventually leading
to hubris and disaster. Whereas in the recent
past American power was hegemonic –
routinely accepted and often considered
legitimate abroad – now it is imposed at the
barrel of a gun. (Mann, 2005: 252)
Radical critics have turned US administration
rhetoric on its head, with one author characterizing
US policy in the title of his book called
simply Rogue State (Blum, 2006). What was
wrong was not only the adoption of an arrogant
unilateralism but the very defi nition of
the war to be fought. Wars can be fought
against proper nouns such as Germany, but
wars against common nouns, for example, a
war on drugs, crime and now terror, are less
successful because these opponents never give
up (Byford, 2002).
Gilles Kepel (2004) entitled his book The
War for Muslim Minds. This was the real war
that had to be fought and won, not a war on
terror. Kepel’s argument is that Al Qaeda’s
strategy was to win over Muslims to establish
an Islamic state internationally. In order to
achieve this aim, it needed a cause to rally the
Muslim world. Palestine provided the cause
with the collapse of the Oslo peace process
and the launch of the second intifada in 2000.
Israeli government repression of the uprising
was recorded on satellite television throughout
the world. Suicide attacks on Israelis was a
tactic used in the 2000 intifada, which was
taken up and spread worldwide. Al Qaeda
used the Palestinian cause to rally supporters,
and it borrowed the tactic of suicide bombing
to devastating effect.
Neoconservatives in the US, meanwhile,
wanted a more rigorous defence of its Israeli
ally in the Middle East, urging that hard power
military action should be taken against Syria,
Iran and Iraq, as these three states represented
the main threat to Israel. Furthermore, the
neoconservatives believed that democratic
governments could be set up in their place.
Hence, both sides – Al Qaeda and the US
neoconservatives – wanted to transform the
Middle East status quo. The 11 September 2001
attacks on the US triggered the war on terror
that produced, in turn, Muslim casualties far
beyond the American casualties. Both sides
killed and wounded innocent victims, which in
turn gave propaganda opportunities both to the
Islamic militants and the Bush administration.
Here was a downward spiral that served
only to foment increasing grievances on both
sides.
The cleverness of Al Qaeda was in the
use of the internet and satellite television
to spread its message and encourage other
groups to act. As Kepel puts it, ‘Al Qaeda
was less a military base of operations than a
data base that connected jihadists all over the
world via the internet’ (2004: 6). Bin Laden
disappeared into the Pakistan–Afghanistan
mountains but reappeared in cyberspace. A
guerrilla war fought in the jungles of Vietnam
was being replaced by a war fought in the
internet jungle. The war on terror launched
by President Bush played into the hands of
Al Qaeda and associated groups, stirring up
hatred for the US and by implication, all of the
progressive enlightenment values associated
with it. This policy made it very diffi cult for
the Muslim middle classes to identify with the
neoconservative project. Yet it was precisely
this group whose support was needed to
defeat the enemy from within, namely, radical
anti-enlightenment Islam. As Sun Tzu reminds
us, the pinnacle of skill is to defeat the enemy
from within by identifying and using its own
weaknesses (Giles, 1910). For a media savvy
country such as the US, this was a serious lapse.
But perhaps, it was a case of being blinded by
one’s own illusions and narrowness of vision.
Both the enemy and its strategy and tactics
were deeply misjudged. This will make the
struggle to defeat anti-enlightenment forces
in both their Western and Eastern forms, as
represented by both radical Islamic groups
and repressive authoritarian elites ruling the
Middle East who either align with or who
line up against the war on terror, become ever
more difficult. Anti-democratic forces will
become ever more entrenched in power.
Legitimate secular opponents to authoritarian
rule in the Middle East can be more easily
silenced as in the case of Egypt, for example.
The ground is made easier for radical Islamists
to take the lead as the opposition to existing
authoritarian governments. Secularism is a
chief victim of the war on terror, alongside of
enlightenment interpretations of the religion
of Islam.
Peter Galbraith’s (2006) book title summarizes
well the current situation, The End of
Iraq. How American Incompetence Created a
War Without End.
V Resources diverted from the real
global challenges
Operation Enduring Freedom was the name
given to the US overthrow of the Taliban
government in Afghanistan. The nature of
this freedom within the war on terror was in
reality a loss of humanitarian space, defi ned
as an operating environment conducive to
independence, neutrality and impartiality in the
relief of human suffering (see, for example,
Ignatieff, 2003; Patel et al., 2005). It was equally
a loss of media freedom in the reporting of the
war. Two processes occurred simultaneously:
fi rst, the military began to blur its own role,
encroaching into humanitarian delivery; and
second, the humanitarian programmes began
to be pressurized to have their programmes
better integrated into the militarily-led war on
terror. Talk was of a coherence agenda, meaning
humanitarian goals would be harnessed
to further peace, security and the development
agendas (de Torrent, 2004; Lister, 2004;
United Nations Development Programme
[UNDP], 2005). This took concrete expression
in Afghanistan in the formation of Provincial
Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), combining
military and civilian personnel in delivering the
security, reconstruction and relief agendas.
Both Borders (2004) and McNearney (2005)
argue that this model could become more
widely disseminated globally. We would caution
that its early political failure in achieving
its proclaimed objectives in Afghanistan is salutary.
Whether there is an early learning curve
from this to change policy remains doubtful.
Shannon (2009) has studied the effects
of constricting humanitarian space on Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in
Afghanistan, identifying their respective
strategies of avoidance, co-option and differentiation.
Areas of intense conflict over
counterinsurgency or the war against opium
production has led to the NGOs avoiding
these areas. Some also avoid sharing space
with PRTs. Many NGOs use the excuse of the
security threat to avoid the potential co-option
agenda of a militarily-led war on terror.
Early in 2007, US General Dan McNeil
replaced UK General David Richards as
head of North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) forces in Afghanistan. Violence had
increased fourfold over the previous year in
Afghanistan, which the US blamed on the soft
power, hearts and minds policies of General
Richards (see Simon Jenkins in The Sunday
Times, 11 February 2007). The new man was
targeting poppy eradication to starve the Taliban
of revenue, he thought. The US also
transferred to Afghanistan the diplomat who
had led the Plan Columbia war on cocaine for
six years. Plan Columbia had simply diverted
cocaine production to neighbouring states of
Bolivia and Peru, where radical anti-American
leaders had come to power, not least as a
backlash to previous US drug eradication
initiatives. Crop spraying of narcotic crops
simply adds to the global environmental problems,
destroying the Amazon rainforest and
mountain habitats. According to Jenkins,
Western intelligence in Kabul is convinced that
‘America’s heavy-handed tactics and addiction
to aerial bombardment have cost the West fi ve
years in Afghanistan’ (Jenkins, The Sunday
Times, 11 February 2007). He goes on to say
that local military commanders are opposed
to the poppy eradication programme, not
least because the drug lords act as a counterweight
to the Taliban. Remember that opium
production only declined dramatically in
Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power.
We have long thought that the latest Afghan
war is un-winnable and Jenkins concurs.
Humanitarianism under a military shield
creates problems: first, for the NGOs own
protection; and second, for gaining permission
to operate in certain areas. The reality of
gaining physical access to people in need
and the issues surrounding the external and
often vague regulation of activity adds an
additional layer of complexity. A further challenge
involves gaining access to funding for
conventional impartial humanitarian work
in the highly charged political era of the war
on terror. Donors driving their own political
agendas constrain funding.
An alternative approach would consider
investing in energy conservation and alternative
energy sources in order to reduce dependence
upon Middle East oil supplies, thereby helping
tackle global warming which is a far greater
threat than the war on terror, and using development
assistance and enlightenment values
rather than military might to win arguments.