Hard Power vs. Soft Power

• Why does US make war everywhere? Why does Japan invest a lot to Vietnam? Why does US put an economic embargo on Cuba?
• Why is English taught at every school? Why has China established hundreds of Confucius instutes in nearly 100 countries? Why do people say Globalization is the same as Amaricanization?

The answers for both two kinds of questions above are all related to one term: "power". In the last article, I argued that "money" and "power" are two most important factors in Politics. In this article I will clarfy the idea behind "power".

So what is "power"?

When you're at school, you can see very clearly that leaders of school clubs are allowed to administrate clubs' resource and assign work to members. It's also the same with Politicians. They want to become leaders of states because it allows them to administrate some or all public resources, including labour, and wealth. In international relations, the objects of influence may be states, events, actors and issues so at this level, one country often considers victory in conflict or ability to control over resource and capabilities.

In general, we can say "power" is the ability to influence others to get the outcomes one wants.

How to affect behavior of others?

There are three main ways:

• Coerce them with threats.
• Induce them with payments.
• Attract or co-opt them.

In other words, with the two first ways, you can use force (stick) or money (carrot) to influence others (rabbit). This's called Hard Power.

But sometimes you can affect others behavior without commanding it, without both of force and money. If someone believes that your objectives are legitimate, you may be able to persuade him (a rabbit) without threats or inducements (by a sexy doe). This is called Soft Power.

This also explains why some radical Muslims may be attracted to support Osama Bin Laden's actions. It's not because of payments or threats, but because they believe in the legitimacy of his objectives. This kind of power also appears through spreading of language and popular culture. For example: a company wants to join global market, it can not use its local language or even French, German but English. Or you can see many teenagers go crazy by Japanese culture or Korean movies.

In modern world, Soft Power is associated with the rise of globalization. Compared with making a war that costs a lot of money (and life, which much more valuable), it seems to be more effective. Simply because Soft Power not only brings back what one wants through a "less money" way but also makes people to give more money in the progress of its spreading.

Money and Power

Again, you can see clearly that money and power have a very closed relationship like I argued in the last article. Do you remember the story of an entrepreneur who wants to startup? He has to face a problem where he can not do what he wants because he doesn't have enough money and he can not earn more when he doesn't sit on the top chair. Simply, the relationship can be described as below:

You can have power if you have enough money, and you can have more money if you have power.

Therefore we can say Soft Power vs Hard Power is not different with Money vs Much Money (in term of cost).

Now, don't ask why many countries trying a lot to spread their culture. But sometimes Soft Power usage is not as peaceful as it sounds because it causes much of cultural conflicts that may be the reason for a war.

After all, we can come to a simple conclusion but we should always remember:

Money and Power can kill everybody and everybody can be killed by greed of Money and Power.