American Soft Power, R.I.P.

The Trump administration sets up a perfect test of whether soft power is useful or not.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

Ever since Joe Nye coined the term “soft power” more than thirty years ago, foreign policy mavens and international relations scholars have debated whether it’s really a thing or not. For those who believe in the concept, soft power is the axle grease of diplomacy. It might be difficult to pinpoint the concrete effects of it, but the idea of getting others to want what you want should, if successful, reduce the diplomatic frictions of achieving foreign policy ends.

For skeptics, the intangible, ineffable nature of the concept makes it difficult to pin down. Since scholars are often hard-pressed to identify concrete situations in which soft power had a tangible effect, critics of the concepts believe that soft power is much ado about nothing.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World does think there is value to soft power. Being in the business of falsification, however, means I always have to consider the possibility that I might be wrong. As it turns out, the Trump administration is now serving up a near-perfect natural experiment: what happens when an administration eviscerates all U.S. soft power in less than four months? Will it make a difference?

Actually, let’s step back for a second: how am I so sure that the Trump administration is erasing American soft power?

Consider that in Nye’s original discussion, he articulated three components of soft power: attractive values, perceptions of policy competence, and cultural attraction. How has the Trump administration affected these three pillars of soft power? Spoiler alert: it ain’t good.

Trump has wreaked considerable damage to the attractive values of the United States. His administration has essentially abandoned every program or initiative that promotes democracy, human rights, or the rule of law. As PRI’s The World recently reported, “The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to dismantle institutions that for decades have been the source of America’s ‘soft power.’ Efforts like the Peace Corps, Voice of America and USAID have been either drastically cut back or entirely gutted during Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office.”

One could argue that the arrogant promotion of such values might be off-putting to other countries. But even those critics would acknowledge that the United States gains from practicing such values at home. In implementing small-l liberal values domestically, the United States can hope that others learn from America’s example — the “shining city on a hill” argument.

The Trump administration is not doing this. Whether it is wallowing in myriad forms of corruption or evading judicial constraints or simply not seeming to care about the Constitution, the current administration has made a mockery of American values.

If the Trump administration is illiberal, at least it’s making the trains run on time, right? Nah. From Signalgate on down, the administration keeps committing foreign policy fuck-up after fuck-up — just an endless series of beclownings. The ridiculously counterproductive trade wars have not turned out at the administration had hoped, causing some Trump officials to start hoarding toilet paper and foodstuffs.

That incompetence extends to national security. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a walking embarrassment. The missile strikes on the Houthis are not restoring deterrence in the Middle East. Indeed, Ynet News recently reported, “the campaign’s main objective—halting Houthi aggression toward Israel and securing Red Sea shipping lanes—has not been achieved…. ‘I haven’t seen an ability to make the Houthis desperate for a pause,’ Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Financial Times. ‘When I’ve spoken with people in the U.S. government, many seem consistently baffled by the Houthi calculus.’”

The Trump administration’s operational security is also something of a joke. As NBC News recent reported:

TeleMessage, the app that President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Waltz, appeared to use to archive his group chats, has suspended all services after hackers claimed to have stolen files from it.

A spokesperson for Smarsh, the company that owns TeleMessage, said Monday that the company “is investigating a potential security incident. Upon detection, we acted quickly to contain it and engaged an external cybersecurity firm to support our investigation.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, all TeleMessage services have been temporarily suspended,” the spokesperson said.

So that all seems bad. But at least the United States can fall back on its cultural attractiveness, right? Right?!

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World need not belabor the dramatic decline in international tourism or foreign students studying in the United States. Rather, I’ll just note that Trump has finally turned his destructive attention towards Hollywood:

The U.S. and international film sectors are reeling after Donald Trump‘s announcement last night that he is “authorizing” the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to impose a 100% tariff on “any and all” movies produced in “foreign lands.”….

The threat, while seemingly embryonic and lacking in any detail, has sent shockwaves through the U.S. and international film sectors. The impact, should anything close to this come to pass, would be seismic on the global film sector….

“It’s insane,” a veteran UK producer told us. “So U.S. companies can only make U.S. films? James Cameron can’t make Avatar overseas? Who pays the tariffs? Leading independent distributors would all be out of business if it’s them.”

In what may prove to be the get-out clause for industry, the same producer noted: “You can’t impose on creatives what stories they can tell.”

Studios and streamers would also take a massive hit from any such move. “This also greatly impacts the streamers, whose model is to produce locally and exploit globally, including in the core U.S. market,” added a veteran international seller. “Would a foreign-shot production ever see the light of day in America? Would it be taken off U.S. streaming services?”

CNN’s reportage similarly suggests that, as in every other sector, Trump’s tariffs will do far more harm than good:

Several movie studio and streaming industry executives who spoke with CNN are downright apoplectic because, they believe, the president hasn’t thought about the ramifications of his proposal, which could decimate an iconic industry….

The prospect of film levies has injected even more uncertainty into an already-unsettled business. Shares of Netflix and other major entertainment companies fell Monday as investors digested Trump’s confusing comments.

“In its current form, the tariff doesn’t make sense,” Jay Sures, vice chairman of United Talent Agency, told CNN….

Sures noted that it can be significantly cheaper to make movies abroad, so a blanket tariff “has the ability to bring the movie business to a standstill – which is the last thing Hollywood needs after dual strikes and a content recession.”

Left unsaid in all of this is that if Trump follows through on this, other countries are likely to retaliate with their own tariffs on Hollywood output — further putting the U.S. film industry at risk.

For every component of American soft power, there is a Trump administration policy designed to scuttle it. Maybe this will have no effect on future U.S. foreign policy. Maybe soft power is a mirage.

We are about to find out. Because whatever U.S. soft power was, it is not the same anymore. We will have to observe what effect that has on U.S. foreign policy.