Does soft power lead to the increase of hard power?
It can, if you attract others into an alliance—like the US did with Europe after World War II. That led to an increase in American hard power. But sometimes hard power and soft power can conflict. For example, in the Iraq war, America’s use of hard power undercut our soft power. The phrase “smart power,” therefore, is designed to show how hard power and soft power interact with and sometimes countervail each other. What countries are most skilled at soft power? Historically, Americans have been very good at it. After all, we won the Cold War by a combination of military strength, which deterred Soviet aggression, and our ideas and culture, which penetrated behind the Iron Curtain and eroded the Soviets’ faith in their system. So when the Berlin Wall came down, it was done by hammers and bulldozers and people whose ideas had been changed—not by artillery. That’s a good example of smart power. China, which has an attractive traditional culture, has recently talked about its need to incre
