The verbiage of the still
evolving discipline of international relations grows thicker and more prolix by
the day, making it ever more difficult for its exponents to keep pace with new
ideas. It was in the early
90s when American political scientist Joseph Nye introduced the concept of ‘soft power’ and by the time US
government started acknowledging its importance in mid-2000s, the Harvard professor
introduced another concept ‘smart
power’ as an extension of his earlier theoretical premise.
Power
to influence
In recent months, a new
term has caught the fancy of American political experts - ‘sharp
power’. The coinage has not only been bandied as a legitimate concept in
international relations, it is claimed that it is fast making redundant the
post-Cold War terminologies of ‘hard’ power’, ‘soft power’ and ‘smart power’. Calling for a rethink of ‘soft power’, a report
by the National Endowment for Democracy published last December argues:
“the conceptual vocabulary that has been used since the Cold War’s end no
longer seems adequate to the contemporary situation.”
To the less sanguine,
‘sharp power’ may be a hybrid of ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’ or a sub-set of one
of them. However, to its detractors the newly minted term is not a legitimate political
concept but a mere instrument of information warfare launched by ‘motivated’
Western academia against the rise of China and Russia as influential ‘soft
powers’.
The
concept of ‘sharp power’ was first introduced in a paper ‘The
Meaning of Sharp Power: How Authoritarian States Project Influence’ by
Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig that was published in the noted US
magazine on international relations Foreign
Affairs on 16 November 2017. It was abstracted from their then upcoming
report in International Forum for Democratic Studies titled: ‘Soft
Power to Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence in the Democratic World’.
The
paper expounds Nye’s definition of hard power and soft power in order to then elucidate
the concept of sharp power. It states that Nye conceived hard power as based on
coercion, and largely being the function of a country’s military or economic
might through threat or payment. In contrast, soft power was “based on
attraction, arising from the positive appeal of a country’s culture, political
ideals, and policies—as well as from a vibrant, independent civil society”.
Thus, soft power covers diplomacy,
strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, economic
reconstruction and development, as well as cultural
influence like art, literature, music, cinema, design, fashion, and even food.
In addition, smart power is the careful calibration of
hard power and soft power to achieve political objectives against a target
country or bloc, and refers to “an approach that
underscores the necessity of a strong military, but also invests heavily in
alliances, partnerships, and institutions of all levels to expand one's
influence and establish legitimacy of one's action.”
New coinage
However, in recent months some Western political
scientists have come up with the prevalence of a different power dynamic in the
sphere of international relations, which they describe as ‘sharp power’.
According to these academicians, ‘authoritarian states’ like Russia and China
employ techniques of influence that may not be considered either ‘hard’ in an
openly coercive sense or ‘soft’ as they are neither benign nor persuasive in
their methods. In fact, far from using attraction and persuasion their attempt
is supposed to cause distraction and manipulation. An
article in the magazine The Economist recently defined “sharp power”
by its reliance on “subversion, bullying and pressure, which combine to promote
self-censorship.”
According to the proponents of this new
concept some countries “pierce, penetrate,
or perforate the political and information environments in the targeted
countries,” and thus their method of influence is neither ‘soft’ or hard’ but
‘sharp’. These political scientists particularly blame China and Russia for
using ‘sharp power’ to promote their national interests in the international
sphere.
The argument here is that authoritarian
states exploit freedoms in the Western world to covertly propagate their
partisan and illiberal views. The proponents of ‘sharp power’ openly blame
Russia and China for having opened media outlets and global television channels
to manipulate news or establish educational or cultural centres abroad to “monopolize ideas, suppress alternative narratives, and exploit
partner institutions.” It is also alleged that
certain countries influence important politicians in the Western world or give
election donations to political parties in order to effect change in a
country’s leadership and policies.
Sharp and invasive
Interestingly, this theory of ‘sharp
power’ comes in the wake of ongoing investigations by the FBI (US’ domestic
intelligence agency) into charges that a top Russian banker having links with
the Kremlin illegally moved money to fund President Trump’s election campaign
in 2016. In Australia, Labor senator Sam Dastyari quit his country’s senate
after reports that he had received money from a billionaire with
ties to the Chinese government. The senator was known to have contradicted his country’s official position
on the territorial dispute with China over the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, Germany’s spy agency
has also accused China of contacting about 10,000 German citizens through
social media, which includes legislators and civil servants, in the hope of
‘gleaning information and recruiting sources.’ It alleges that China has been using the
LinkedIn business network to ensnare politicians and government officials, by
having people posing as recruiters and think-tankers and offering free trips.
Western press reports
also talk about China “grooming up-and-coming politicians from Britain,
especially those with business links to the country”. In fact, Anne-Marie Brady of the University
of Canterbury in New Zealand has gone to the extent of calling the use of ‘sharp
power’ by China and Russia as the “new global battle”.
War of words
For its part, China has called the entire argument
about its alleged ‘sharp power’ as “irresponsible and paranoid”. It attributes
such allegations as a sign of anxiety among major powers towards the country’s
growing international influence. As for Joseph Nye, the political pundit claims
that one of the great dangers of sharp power is that democracies might be
tempted to imitate sharp power tools of authoritarian regimes and lose their
openness and soft power, which he deems as vital assets.
However, there are cynics who contend that
the so-called sharp power tools and information warfare techniques are not the inventions
or the exclusive preserve of China or Russia and have been used by secret
services (particularly, espionage and manipulation) of various countries
including democracies for a very long time.
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