Listening: Ave Maria, (Prelude in C Major by J.S. Bach with sung melody as arranged by Charles Gounud) performed by Bobby McFerrin and his audience
In one of his first executive orders, President Barack Obama ordered a 120 day freeze on all military trials of terrorist suspects being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama has pledged that the military commission system set up there under the Bush administration will be defunct by 2010. Reactions to this decision have been split in America. Many hailed it as a first and important step towards building a new foreign policy. Others criticized it as irresponsible, dangerous, and compromising of national security.
The fault lines surrounding this issue are partisan. Republicans tend to be critical of the decision to close Guantanamo while Democrats are largely supportive of it. At the risk of furthering and potentially exploiting a false dichotomy, the respective positions inform the broader world views of the two camps. For the past eight years the Republican security strategy has been influenced by the deeply held neoconservative conviction that we live in an utterly anarchic world where the rule of law is unreliable and where civil liberties must sometimes be sacrificed to fight the war on terror. Democrats tend to place more faith in the rule of law and more of an emphasis on the protection of civil liberties at all cost. Both perspectives rely on dangerous assumptions.
In his article Smart Power; In Search of the Balance between Hard and Soft Power (2006), Joseph Nye continues his previous efforts to classify the utility of power. (See Soft Power, 1990, by Nye). Prior to writing this article, Nye had made a critical distinction between hard power and soft power. He defines hard power as the use of military means and coercion to achieve foreign policy objectives. Soft power is its opposite, whereby foreign policy goals are met by means of attraction rather than coercion. When writing this article in 1990, Nye was careful to explain that these are analytic terms and not political positions. However, I do believe that today he would agree with the following generalization: that the Republican approach to foreign policy over the past eight years has been characteristic of hard power and that the Democratic opposition has been more preferential of soft power.
In the context of our current conflicts in the Middle East and the ongoing War on Terror, (which, by the way needs to be renamed immediately to something less invective and provocative) both approaches must be employed. Nye argues, "we need hard power to battle the extremists, we need the soft power of attraction to win the hearts and minds of the majority of Muslims (103)." To this end, Nye proposes the term smart power--a new attitude about foreign policy which stems from the belief that "soft power is not necessarily better than hard power and that the two should be complementary parts of an effective strategy" (105). I agree with this, and I also believe that going forward, President Obama's emphasis on restraint, diplomacy, and building relationships must be coupled with a willingness to employ military force when necessary.
The most important thing--and I believe that Mr. Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay has made this abundantly clear--is that we set and implement policies that are consistent with our American values.
Employing smart power necessarily requires change in American foreign policy. If we are serious about spreading democracy and rebuilding our reputation in the world, our actions must reflect our values. With Iraq, we have learned the limits of coercive democratization. Following 9/11 2001 and with Abu Ghraib in 2003, we have been forced to deal not only with our roles as victims of atrocity, but also with our capacity to serve as agents of atrocity when our judgement is impaired by notions of moral superiority and righteousness. With Israel, we have been confronted with the power of wealthy lobbyists to compromise the legitimacy of American foreign policy by bending it in a direction that does not serve our interests. With Guantanamo, we have seen the hypocrisy of a legal system that keeps suspected terrorists awaiting trial indefinitely while subjecting them to torture. The total effect of these actions is a foreign policy characterized by hard power alone--one that has ironically compromised our power, freedom, and security relative to the rest of the world.
I agree with those who see closing the military prisons at Guantanamo Bay not only as a step away from the policies of the Bush administration, but as a step towards restoring American credibility, reestablishing American moral authority, and towards winning the hearts and minds of those nations who might partner with us in the poorly named War on Terror.
This does not mean a policy of appeasement. Military power and the threat of military action must remain a central part of American foreign policy. However, as Nye points out, there is tremendous opportunity to strengthen American soft power. Diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster relief, and military-to-military contacts already all exist within our government. Implementing an American foreign policy characterized by smart power requires that Mr. Obama integrate these mechanisms into an overarching national security strategy. The clock is ticking.......
work cited: Nye, Joseph. Smart Power; In Search of the Balance between Hard and Soft Power. Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue 2, 2006. pp. 102-107.
"Coercion, after all, merely captures a man. Freedom captivates him."
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara
Kennedy and Johnson Cabinets 1961-1968
