A Look At Soft Power as a Nonmilitary Means in Today’s International Relations

The world offers a plethora of problems, intricacies, and constant, rapid changes for leading nations to address. The challenges over growing protectionist sentiments in the face of international trade policies to the threats of rogue nations and the control of nuclear arms are always present for the leading countries to struggle over.

How do nations address these issues on the international stage? With the absence of a central authority or a governing body on the world stage even simple dialogue between nations can at times prove to be unusually difficult. Internationally, the nature of power in politics is dictated by the ability of a state to make war so risky for any adversary wishing to act against its interest that it is seldom tried. It is first and foremost that a state’s military power determines its overall power in international politics and it is from this bit of irony that only diplomacy can work. Simply put, the raw power of the participants dictates the outcome of events. 

When the world was neatly polarized between the Soviets and the U.S. each sharing in equal measures the world’s problems and power, the military question was hardly ever considered. Either power could not credibly threaten the other militarily because a war between the two great superpowers would lead to the destruction of both that no one dared to start it. However, there was one aspect of strategic importance that the Soviets could not compare in with the United States. The economic power and advantage the U.S. enjoyed–and still does today–allowed for economic sanctions that would coerce the Soviet Union to diplomacy. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Carter administration withheld grain shipments hoping it would force them to change their foreign policy. Likewise, the same was tried in Poland during the 1970s to try and get Poland to liberalize their governments and allow for more democracy. In Poland it failed without much effect. America had little influence on Poland’s economy as a Soviet bloc country to be able to force them away from certain policies. The Soviets were in ways affected by the sanctions but proved like most other communist countries to be largely self contained.

This strategy has continued and has been greatly used by the United States in place of military action. The imposition of economic sanctions has been used to try and punish or convince a state to change course or enact certain reforms in government or human rights. Sanctions have worked in instances. Most notably was the international boycott of investment into South Africa that led to the collapse of that country’s government. America has on numerous occasions acted unilaterally because of our unprecedented strength as an economic power in the world. However, because of interdependency and globalization, the spigot is rarely completely cutoff. In the case with South Africa nearly all the nations of the world cooperated to ensure that that government had no other means of supply and support.

We have withheld trade from China, Cuba, Iran, (then) Soviet Union, and numerous other countries. In almost all cases the country being sanctioned bought from countries in Europe or Japan. Cuba has proven to be durable in face of impenetrable sanctions. The people of Cuba have went without but the government endured and the sanctions have hardly sped up the democratization process on the island. The case is the same for Iran. They could be living better but the people are not going totally without, especially considering their biggest oil customers are Japan and Germany.

The U.S. can inflict hardship but rarely enough to make the target country’s government buckle and collapse. Furthermore, sanctions hurt productivity and the economy at home. In 1995, $20 billion of exports and nearly 300,000 jobs were lost at the expense of sanctions and trade policies in the U.S. (Business Week, 17 November 1997, p. 115).

The World Economy says this about economic sanctions against China in 2004

The United States maintains a broad spectrum of economic sanctions against China ranging from export controls to prohibitions on certain imports. Our study finds that, although from a macroeconomic perspective, US sanctions have had no significant adverse effect on China’s overall economic growth and trade between the two countries, they do have a negative impact on producers and consumers in both countries. US economic sanctions have hindered technology transfer to China and US investment in China. US restrictions on imports from China have caused deadweight losses for the US due to higher domestic production costs for import substitutes and a reduction in consumption. US export controls have hindered US exports to China and contributed to large US trade deficits with China. The export controls have also caused losses of high-paid jobs in the United States and benefited competitors from other countries. In addition, US economic sanctions against China have had significant third-party effects. China’s diversification of imports to sources other than the United States may have a long-term effect on US exports to China even after US economic sanctions against China are lifted.

These numbers have only increased in recent years EPI Policy Center (PDF)

• Since President Bush took office, the U.S. trade deficit has nearly doubled from $379 billion (2000) to $700 billion (2007)
• The trade deficit with China alone tripled from $83 billion in 2000 to $256 billion in 2007
• As a share of the economy, the overall trade deficit rose from 3.9% of GDP in 2000 to a peak of 5.7% in 2006, before moderating slightly to 5.1% of GDP in 2007
• In President Bush’s first term, the United States lost 1.9 million jobs to trade deficits
• In 2007, the bilateral trade deficit with China represented 1.85% of the entire economy Growth in this deficit since 2001 has displaced 2.3 million net jobs
• Between 2000 and June 2008, the United States lost 3.4 million manufacturing jobs

Recent estimates have predicted that next year China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest producer of manufactured goods

To many, until faced with the statistics, this proves better than the alternative of calling on a totally destructive military force that could blot out 300,000 lives instead of 300,000 jobs. It allows politicians to give off the feeling that they avoided war by at least doing something painful to the target country. However, unless they are internationally supported they rarely have any effect and only hurt our economy and American families. Not many wish to go to war and is usually a decision always made as the last resort. However, just as unilateral wars are dangerous to the maker so is unilateral economic actions. America has to rethink its policies on trade sanctions in a modern world where financial markets are so connected that even the biggest economic force can, in parts, be circumvented.