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STRATEGIC

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INSTITUTE

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SSI Monograph

HARD POWER AND SOFT POWER:

THE UTILITY OF MILITARY FORCE

AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POLICY IN THE 

21ST CENTURY

Colin S. Gray

April 2011

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ii

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ISBN 1-58487-486-4
iii

FOREWORD

The concept of soft power, that is the influence 

attained through the co-option of foreigners by the 

attractiveness of our values, ideas, and practices, understandably has great appeal. Soft power is much 

cheaper than the hard power of military force, and it 

is more compatible with the culture of a principally 

liberal American society. All too often, military force 

seems to fail as an instrument of policy and, as a consequence, it invites the view that it is becoming obsolescent and even anachronistic.

Dr. Colin Gray subjects hard and soft power to 

close critical scrutiny and finds that the latter is significantly misunderstood and, as a consequence, misassessed as a substitute for the threat or use of military force. Each kind of power has its limitations, but 

the obvious and familiar challenges characteristic of 

military force do not mean that therefore soft power 

should be our policy instrument of choice. The author 

warns against expecting too much of soft power.

 

 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute
iv

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, 

England. He worked at the International Institute for 

Strategic Studies (London), and at Hudson Institute 

(Croton-on-Hudson, NY) before founding the National Institute for Public Policy, a defense-oriented 

think tank in the Washington, DC, area. Dr. Gray 

served for 5 years in the Reagan administration on 

the President’s General Advisory Committee on Arms 

Control and Disarmament. He has served as an adviser to both the U.S. and British governments (he has 

dual citizenship). His government work has included 

studies of nuclear strategy, arms control, maritime 

strategy, space strategy and the use of special forces. 

Dr. Gray has written 24 books, including: The Sheriff: 

America’s Defense of the New World Order (University 

Press of Kentucky, 2004); Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Strategy 

and History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 

2007; Potomac Books, 2009); National Security Dilemmas: Challenges and Opportunities (Potomac Books, 

2009); and The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010). His next book will be Airpower for Strategic Effect. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the 

Universities of Manchester and Oxford.
v

SUMMARY

Power is one of the more contestable concepts in 

political theory, but it is conventional and convenient 

to define it as “the ability to effect the outcomes you 

want and, if necessary, to change the behavior of others to make this happen.” (Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) In recent 

decades, scholars and commentators have chosen to 

distinguish between two kinds of power, “hard” and 

“soft.” The former, hard power, is achieved through 

military threat or use, and by means of economic menace or reward. The latter, soft power, is the ability to 

have influence by co-opting others to share some of 

one’s values and, as a consequence, to share some key 

elements on one’s agenda for international order and 

security. Whereas hard power obliges its addressees 

to consider their interests in terms mainly of calculable costs and benefits, principally the former, soft 

power works through the persuasive potency of ideas 

that foreigners find attractive. The nominal promise 

in this logic is obvious. Plainly, it is highly desirable if 

much of the world external to America wants, or can 

be brought to want, a great deal of what America happens to favor also. Coalitions of the genuinely willing 

have to be vastly superior to the alternatives.

Unfortunately, although the concept of American soft power is true gold in theory, in practice it 

is not so valuable. Ironically, the empirical truth behind the attractive concept is just sufficient to mislead policymakers and grand strategists. Not only 

do Americans want to believe that the soft power of 

their civilization and culture is truly potent, we are 

all but programmed by our enculturation to assume 

that the American story and its values do and should 
have what amounts to missionary merit that ought 

to be universal. American culture is so powerful a 

programmer that it can be difficult for Americans to 

empathize with, or even understand, the somewhat 

different values and their implications held deeply 

abroad. The idea is popular, even possibly authoritative, among Americans that ours is not just an “ordinary country,” but instead is a country both exceptionally blessed (by divine intent) and, as a consequence, 

exceptionally obliged to lead Mankind. When national 

exceptionalism is not merely a proposition, but is more 

akin to an iconic item of faith, it is difficult for usually 

balanced American minds to consider the potential of 

their soft power without rose-tinted spectacles. And 

the problem is that they are somewhat correct. American values, broadly speaking “the American way,” 

to hazard a large project in reductionism, are indeed 

attractive beyond America’s frontiers and have some 

utility for U.S. policy. But there are serious limitations 

to the worth of the concept of soft power, especially as 

it might be thought of as an instrument of policy. To 

date, the idea of soft power has not been subjected to a 

sufficiently critical forensic examination. In particular, 

the relation of the soft power of attraction and persuasion to the hard power of coercion urgently requires 

more rigorous examination than it has received thus 

far.

When considered closely, the subject of soft power 

and its implications for the hard power of military 

force reveals a number of plausible working propositions that have noteworthy meaning for U.S. policy 

and strategy.

1. Hard military threat and use are more difficult 

to employ today than was the case in the past, in part 

because of the relatively recent growth in popular 

vi
vii

respect for universal humanitarian values. However, 

this greater difficulty does not mean that military 

force has lost its distinctive ability to secure some political decisions. The quality of justification required 

for the use of force has risen, which means that the 

policy domain for military relevance has diminished, 

but has by no means disappeared.

2. The political and other contexts for the use of 

force today do not offer authoritative guidance for 

the future. History is not reliably linear. To know the 

2000s is not necessarily to know the 2010s.

3. The utility of military force is not a fixed metric 

value, either universally or for the United States. The 

utility of force varies with culture and circumstance, 

inter alia. It is not some free-floating objective calculable truth.

4. For both good and for ill, ethical codes are 

adapted and applied under the pressure of more or 

less stressful circumstances, and tend to be significantly situational in practice. This is simply the way 

things are and have always been. What a state licenses 

or tolerates by way of military behavior effected in its 

name depends to a degree on how desperate and determined are its policymakers and strategists.

5. War involves warfare, which means military 

force, which means violence that causes damage, injury, and death. Some of the debate on military force 

and its control fails to come to grips with the bloody 

reality, chaos, and friction that is in the very nature of 

warfare. Worthy and important efforts to limit conduct in warfare cannot avoid accepting the inherent 

nastiness of the subject. War may be necessary and it 

should be restrained in its conduct, but withal it is by 

definition illiberally violent behavior.
6. By and large, soft power should not be thought 

of as an instrument of policy. America is what it is, 

and the ability of Washington to project its favored 

“narrative(s)” is heavily constrained. Cultural diplomacy and the like are hugely mortgaged by foreigners’ own assessments of their interests. And a notable 

dimension of culture is local, which means that efforts 

to project American ways risk fueling “blow-back.”

7. Soft power cannot sensibly be regarded as a substantial alternative to hard military power. Familiarity with the concept alone encourages the fallacy that 

hard and soft power have roughly equivalent weight 

and utility. An illusion of broad policy choice is thus 

fostered, when in fact effective choices are severely 

constrained.

8. An important inherent weakness of soft power 

as an instrument of policy is that it utterly depends 

upon the uncoerced choices of foreigners. Sometimes 

their preferences will be compatible with ours, but 

scarcely less often they will not be. Interests and cultures do differ.

9. Soft power tends to be either so easy to exercise 

that it is probably in little need of a policy push, being essentially preexistent, or too difficult to achieve 

because local interests, or culture, or both, deny it political traction.

10. Hard and soft power should be complementary, though often they are not entirely so. U.S. national 

style, reflecting the full array of American values as a 

hegemonic power, has been known to give some cultural and hence political offense abroad, even among 

objective allies and other friends. Whereas competent 

strategy enables hard military power to be all, or most 

of what it can be, soft power does not lend itself readily to strategic direction.

viii
ix

11. Provided the different natures of hard and soft 

power are understood—the critical distinguishing factor being coercion versus attraction—it is appropriate 

to regard the two kinds of power as mutual enablers. 

However, theirs is an unequal relationship. The greater attractiveness of soft power is more than offset in 

political utility by its inherent unsuitability for policy 

direction and control.

From all the factors above, it follows that military 

force will long remain an essential instrument of policy. That said, popular enthusiasm in Western societies 

for the placing of serious restraints on the use of force 

can threaten the policy utility of the military. The ill 

consequences of America’s much-manifested difficulty in thinking and behaving strategically are augmented perilously when unwarranted faith is placed upon 

soft power that inherently is resistant to strategic direction. Although it is highly appropriate to be skeptical of the policy utility of soft power, such skepticism 

must not be interpreted as implicit advice to threaten 

or resort to military force with scant reference to moral 

standards. Not only is it right in an absolute sense, it is 

also expedient to seek, seize, and hold the moral high 

ground. There can be significant strategic advantage 

in moral advantage—to risk sounding cynical. Finally, it is essential to recognize that soft power tends to 

work well when America scarcely has need of it, but 

the more challenging contexts for national security require the mailed fist, even if it is cushioned, but not 

concealed, by a glove of political and ethical restraint.

1

HARD POWER AND SOFT POWER:

THE UTILITY OF MILITARY FORCE AS AN

INSTRUMENT OF POLICY IN THE 

21ST CENTURY

Simply put, power is the ability to effect the outcomes 

you want, and if necessary, to change the behavior of 

others to make this happen.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., 20021

Hard times make for soft principles.

Gavin Lyall, 19932

INTRODUCTION: RUST ON THE MAILED FIST?

Fighting is the core competency of the soldier; he is 

a specialist in violence. While armed forces can serve 

many purposes, what defines them uniquely is their 

ability to damage things and injure or kill people as 

a legitimate instrument of the polity. When functioning under the authority of law to advance or protect 

the political interests of a security community, the 

soldier can be said to threaten or execute force rather 

than violence.3

 This distinction in language, and even 

in concept, is apt to be clearer in principle than it is in 

practice, particularly if one is on the receiving end.

The main purpose of this analysis is to consider 

the relevance of military power today as well as for 

tomorrow. This is a subject that should give one pause 

before claiming a confident understanding of it. Major 

trends seem clear enough, but will they continue? The 

frequency with which history shows a liking for irony 

suggests that the future context for military power 

may be unlike that of today, in good part because 
2

the contemporary situation contains features that 

will be repudiated in the future in some mixture of 

thought, word, and deed. The course of history assuredly reveals that events must advance from what 

preceded them, which is why defense analysis, especially if it seeks to peer into the future, must honor 

chronology. But the chronology of historical narrative 

may obscure the traps of nonlinearity. What we know 

for certain about the 21st century is that we know little 

of detail with total assurance. Moreover, even broad 

trends that appear to have unstoppable momentum 

are not to be trusted to deliver on their obvious promise.

History must be our guide, if only because nothing 

else is accessible. Unfortunately, the past as it is interpreted in the history written by historians provides 

anything but a reliable compass. Argument either 

by historical analogy, or at the least with illustration 

by historical anecdote claimed to be pertinent, is the 

rule, not the exception, in political discourse.4 This is 

scarcely surprising, since today is by definition both 

brief and unstable, while the future by definition is 

blank. All that is available as an evidential base for our 

political and strategic guidance is a past that cannot be 

recovered faithfully, even by those who seek honestly 

to do so, with the result that the past is mediated by 

historians. Since many facts do not speak with total 

clarity for themselves, they have to be interpreted by 

historians, amateur and professional.5

 A factually reliable chronicle of an obviously major episode in the recent past, World War II say, or the Cold War, is easier 

to assemble than is a theory, or rather an explanation, 

which makes thoroughly persuasive sense of the subject at issue.
3

All too obviously, this monograph cannot and 

should not seek to build from a clean slate. Of course 

one seeks truth, but already there is a great deal that 

claims to be that rare commodity out there, both in 

the marketplace of popular ideas and also in the laws, 

rules, customs, norms, and policies currently extant 

and indeed variably authoritative. Readers scarcely 

need reminding that my subject is not at all terra incognita. In point of fact, the very strength of the contemporary Western currency of beliefs and rules is itself 

something of a challenge to this particular project. 

Moreover, the political, legal, and cultural authority of 

some attitudes that now are dominant can hardly be 

doubted. Unfortunately, the subject in need of debate 

for a more prudent understanding is neither the identity nor the desirability of current practice. Rather, it 

is the overriding issue of the validity of assuming that 

present contexts determining what is widely believed 

to be the utility or disutility of force have authority for 

the future.

For the educational purposes of this monograph, 

I need to be more respectful of some politically incorrect arguments than is usual, to break some culturally attractive conceptual crockery, and generally to 

be less than tolerant of some fashionable assumptions 

and theories. Possibly contrary to appearances, the 

purpose here is constructive and not destructive for 

its own sake. But, as the old excuse for atrocity declares, “One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.” 

The plan of attack for this inquiry is to examine 

the question of the utility of force in the 21st century 

through the lenses that 11 propositions provide. They 

differ in focus and attitude, and fairly can be judged to 

include the correct, the incorrect, the correct but mis-
4

leading, and the incorrect but enlightening. They have 

been selected and exploited for their forensic value, 

not their close fit with what this author believes to be 

sound. Agreement, disagreement, and partial conditional agreement are registered as best fits the case. 

The coda comprises a holistic argument in the form of 

a set of concluding points that have more or less explicit meaning for policy, strategy, and tactics. These 

conclusions express the outcome to the deliberately 

granular analyses in the main body of discussion.

11 PROPOSITIONS

1. Military force has less utility as an instrument 

of policy in the 21st century than it did in times past, 

even recent times past.

This claim is popular today. The contemporary evidence in its support appears persuasive, and there is 

no shortage of theory to explain why it should be true. 

But all that glitters may not be gold, as this monograph 

will suggest. Commentators and theorists always 

have trouble distinguishing stand-alone events and 

episodes from trends. The analogy with climatology 

is almost too persuasive. In truth, it is a poor journalist 

or scholar who is unable to show that current conditions—political, strategic, or meteorological—are not 

indicative of a trend or two, be they welcome or otherwise. There tends to be fame and fortune in the notice 

that signally good or bad news (it may not much matter which), colorfully conveyed, attracts. 

Since all theorists have historical and other coordinates in time, place, and circumstance, so too must 

their theories bear some greater or lesser imprint of 

the contexts of their authors. When married to the ap-
5

parently irresistible human weakness for favoring the 

relative significance of the present, the widespread 

attractions of the idea of progress tend to produce 

ahistorical prognoses of the declining utility of force. 

Americans (or Britons) who argue today that military 

force is much less useful a tool for policy than used 

to be the case, may be making one or more among 

several candidate claims. Specifically, whether or not 

they themselves realize it, they could be suggesting 

any of the following (and this is only a modest selection among the options possible):

a. Globally, for all potential belligerents, military 

force is of declining utility.

b. Military force is not as useful as was the case, 

even quite recently, for some security communities, 

but not for others.

c. Military force is not as useful in wars wherein 

the warfare is largely of an irregular character as it is 

in others wherein a customary style of combat dominates. Because today and in the “forseeable future” 

an irregular character to warfare is, and is expected 

to be, predominant, military force now is at a heavy 

discount.6

There is much to recommend the three options 

just offered, but there is a serious possibility that 

the measure of truth that each contains is more than 

balanced by its ability to mislead. The first option, 

ironically, is unsound despite the fact that it is correct and somewhat plausible. Specifically, the now 

near-instant global access to information enabled by 

information technology (IT) and space systems, both 

encourage and discourage the use of force, when 

force is regarded as a performance for global political 

(and moral) theater. The global media market that de-
6

lights in recording atrocities, real or merely claimed, 

does not necessarily discourage such happenings. On 

the contrary, the global IT that feeds material for the 

activation of consciences around the world provides 

just the marketing assets that some belligerents crave 

in their demand for attention. We need to beware of 

theorizing about a context that while truly global, is 

less than universally common in its meaning.7

The second option may well be true, but it might 

have merit only as a judgment on particular discretionary choices at particular times and places. When 

military force does not succeed in supporting the 

goals in its political guidance, it is only reasonable to 

claim that such force proved less than adequately useful. However, it may well be that the fault lay with the 

political mission assigned, possibly with the strategy 

(if any, worthy of the label) attempted, or with a military instrument unable to perform effectively in the 

field for a number of reasons largely internal to itself. 

Conflicts and wars can be complex phenomena, as can 

international relations much more broadly; this means 

that one should not rush to judgment on the question 

of the utility or disutility of military force.

The third option suggests that military force may 

be losing its relative value because it is counterproductive or otherwise ineffective in warfare of an irregular 

character. This argument can be illustrated by the currently fashionable claim to the effect that we cannot 

kill our way to victory in Afghanistan. This option is 

problematic in at least two principal respects. First, it 

could be less true than it is popular to acknowledge. 

Second, even if it is as true as its host of adherents 

today maintain, it is less than self-evident that the 

conflicts, wars, and warfare of tomorrow will share 

a character that does not privilege military power 

among the tools of grand strategy.
7

Notwithstanding the skeptical notes just struck, 

plainly the thesis that military power is less useful today than yesterday has much to recommend it. That 

said, there is much wisdom in the words of Supreme 

Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, when he advised famously that “[g]eneral propositions do not 

decide concrete cases.”8

 Although this monograph is 

seeking some general truth about the utility of military force in the 21st century, it is acutely alert to the 

potential peril of confusing a few concrete cases with 

irrefutable evidence of a fully matured truth. An 

American failure to use military force in ways that 

proved successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, should 

that be one’s current verdict, may have no justification in other episodes of belligerency. Those “concrete 

cases” may speak only for themselves. They may say 

little about the strategic value of military force against 

other belligerents both today and tomorrow, and also 

as employed by the United States and Britain at other 

times and in other places and circumstances. Nonetheless, it would be irresponsible in the extreme to attempt to dismiss recent nonuse-of-force prescriptions 

as harbingers of conflict in a century that is barely 10 

years old. We simply do not know what this century 

will bring.

It is helpful to approach the question of the disutility of military force, that is, quintessential “hard power,” with reference to constraints and disincentives. 

The proposition that military force has lost some, perhaps much, of its usefulness as an instrument of policy 

is broadly supported by four apparently persuasive 

claims: two are best categorized under the banner of 

constraints, and two under that of disincentives.

The content of the constraints basket can be summarized in the twin judgments that the use of military 

force now entails costs that are much too high, and 
8

secures rewards that are unduly meager. The familiar cost-benefit discriminator lends itself to casual deployment that undercuts the case for military action 

today. When Americans in search of revenge for honor affronted and pain suffered have largely quenched 

their thirst (as over September 11, 2001 [9/11]), liberal 

values tend to reappear from the bunker wherein they 

hid for a while, and the public recalls what it does 

not like about warfare. War means warfare, inter alia, 

and warfare means death, destruction, and taxes. The 

conduct of warfare inherently is illiberal behavior, 

no matter how noble or even inalienable the political (and moral) cause of the moment. The nastiness of 

war, any war, can be justified in our culture only in 

terms of its consequential, not its expressive, rewards. 

The consequences of war and warfare plausibly have 

to be weighed with the cost-benefit verdict plainly 

showing as positive for us and our values. When such 

is not obviously the result, then the cost-benefit books 

do not balance, let alone show a healthy imbalance for 

the “right.”

In the first decade of this century, America waged 

warfare that has been unmistakably shy of some approximation of victory. Moreover, the moral climate 

for contemporary political behavior (warfare is political behavior), has been singularly unpermissive 

of what allegedly appears as the gratuitous use of 

military force. Military action, even precisely targeted 

military action, is portrayed as atrocity by a now globalized media. Writing in the late 1990s, Michael Ignatieff explained the contemporary context for the use of 

force as follows:

The world is not becoming more chaotic or violent, 

although our failure to understand and act makes 
9

it seem so. Nor has the world become more callous. 

Weak as the narrative of compassion and moral commitment may be, it is infinitely stronger than it was 

only fifty years ago. We are scarcely aware of the extent to which our moral imagination has been transformed since 1945 by the growth of a language and 

practice of moral universalism, expressed above all in 

a shared human rights culture. Television in its turn 

makes it harder to sustain indifference or ignorance.9

 Today there is a political and moral battle that inherently is hard to win when one conducts warfare 

against enemies who hide, yet fight “amongst the 

people,” and are able to decline to do battle of a kind 

where they might be defeated swiftly and decisively.10

When we now consider the matter of disincentives 

to resort to military force, it follows all too naturally 

from the previous discussion of constraints that two 

negative considerations are apt to dominate the field 

of policy debate. First, so the argument goes, today 

there is less to gain by the use of military power, even 

if such use is strategically successful. Second, it can 

be suggested plausibly that the risks of the resort to 

military force are significantly different than used to 

be the case. War remains in principle the servant of 

the national interest, just as it is still properly held 

to be the legitimate last resort of the polity. But, increasingly so it would seem, warfare also needs to be 

“lawfare.”11 Whether or not the national interest might 

be advanced or protected by force, and whether or 

not the polity deems itself to be in a situation of “last 

resort,” war today requires persuasive legal justification.12 Efforts to provide that justification are likely to 

be more or less challengeable. The legal and legalistic 

argument will carry a heavy burden of moral baggage, and this weight will likely have practical impli-
10

cations for the conduct and consequences of the warfare. War is always a gamble, a risky endeavor, as Carl 

von Clausewitz sought to emphasize.13 For today and 

prospectively tomorrow, the context includes a now 

global, attentive, and skeptical news media, and the 

inconvenient reality that much of contemporary conflict is irregular in character. Today in war, the consequential costs of failure, even of some success, tend to 

be higher than they were in the 20th century. It should 

be needless to say that the cost of failure in a major 

traditional war has always been high.

Since it would seem that the costs of war have risen 

while the potential rewards have fallen, it is not a hard 

sell or a leap of faith to claim that the utility of military 

force is on a sharp decline. Unfortunately, the foregoing would not be a safe judgment to make, as is said 

sometimes about legal verdicts. Plausible, perhaps not 

implausible, yes; true, probably not. Most especially 

is the judgment on the disutility of military force unsafe with regard to the possible behavior of noticeably 

un-American polities and societies (and tribes and 

gangs). Paradoxically, the very fact of war’s obvious 

unattractiveness to America, and its closer friends and 

allies, must prove an incentive to America’s enemies 

to fight on—and on.14 This assertion seeks to oblige 

some contemporary noble hopes that masquerade as 

enlightened assumptions, to confront the enduring 

conflictive nature of our history. The spoils of victory 

are not what they once were—for example, territory, 

gold and other natural resources, and glory—but they 

are still substantial. The currencies of relative gain alter, but not the competition or the reality of winners 

and losers.
11

2. Times change—history is chronological, but it is 

not reliably linear.

To know the first decade of the 21st century is not to 

know the second or, indeed, any decade in the future. 

Some of the pathologies that typically are discernible 

in defense planning are confidently attributable to 

unsound approaches to genuine dilemmas. In truth 

there is no thoroughly sound way in which to prepare 

against the security and defense problems of tomorrow. Unfortunately, we have to attempt the impossible, which is why one should be empathetic towards 

those who must provide answers for questions that, 

as yet, are unspecified.15 It is commonplace to refer 

to defense planning without being specific as to just 

what one means. For the purposes of this monograph, 

such planning is understood broadly rather than narrowly. Defense planning is approached here as any 

behavior that purposefully connects ends, ways, and 

means, and which pertains to the actual or conditionally possible use of military force. The plans can be 

regarded as strategies, and they may be more or less 

formal.16 All too obviously the merit in our strategies, 

including our military plans, will depend upon their 

relevance to future circumstances, as well as to their 

performance when executed by our assets existing on 

the day of commitment.

Because of America’s generally defensive stance in 

support of a values-based world order that it has had 

a considerable share in designing, plans and planning 

are apt to be a less useful way of coping with the future than one might suppose. In order to be as ready 

as it is able to cope with a future that it cannot design, 

America needs to prepare rather than plan. The planning function certainly is critically important, and it 
12

requires military professionals who are both educated 

in strategy and trained in how to produce plans. But it 

should be understood that beyond the revealed needs 

of today, the defense planner is engaged in defense 

preparation. And that preparation pertains to the ability to adapt well enough to the policy demands that 

arise out of contexts currently impossible to predict 

with high assurance.

The beginning of a prudent wisdom regarding the 

utility of military force is to recognize two inconvenient historical realities. First, times change. Moreover, 

times change frequently and unpredictably. Second, 

while our tiny temporal island of “today” necessarily looms largest in our relative significance rating 

for historical moments, such elevation of the present 

is always likely to mislead. Today must matter most, 

in the obvious sense that whatever the future holds 

has to flow from what is current. However, because 

we can only attempt to reset the future from today, it 

does not follow that we can be assured of success. It 

can be difficult even for historically educated people 

to appreciate realities that they find unwelcome. To be 

specific, people tend to resist the following plausible 

propositions:

• The notion of progress is a matter of definition; 

it carries particular meanings in particular cultures.

• Material advance and moral progress frequently are conflated and confused. Societies that become better equipped are not, ipso facto, better.

• Similarly, to be better off, in the sense of more 

wealthy, is not necessarily to be better in any 

way other than the material; indeed, increase 

in wealth may correlate with greater selfishness 

and a greater vulnerability as one’s assets become more attractive to predators.
13

• Change need not mean progress.

• Change need not be linear and unidirectional.

Our judgment can hardly help being influenced by 

our values, and those will vary with time, place, and 

circumstance (see Proposition 3). It is only human to 

seek improvement, inter alia, and also it is human to 

confuse aspiration with probability. Our goal here is 

not the relatively easy one of identifying, understanding, and then explaining the contemporary balance of 

costs and benefits attendant upon the threat or use of 

military force. Even that duty is more complex than it 

may appear, because of the need to recognize variety 

(for example, of actor and strategic context). The challenge here is not to interpret the evidence of today for 

today. Instead, in effect it is to consider what, if anything, our current context means for the future. While 

today is most obviously a milestone on history’s journey and has to be the departure gate for the remainder 

of the century, can it speak powerfully to the probable 

character of the strategic future?

Major plausible fallacies must be identified as such 

and duly need to be slain. First, there is the assumption that because today is different from the past, the 

latter is of no enduring consequence. The solemn, even 

banal, pronouncement that “times have changed,” can 

be deployed portentously as the basis for the master 

claim that reference to old ideas and happenings as 

claimed analogies, is simply anachronistic.17 Second, 

almost any historical self-awareness should advise 

that the future is not foreseeable and is not capable 

of being shaped and directed purposefully, and that 

it need not be characterized by features that suggest 

moral improvement. Because of the interplay of complexity, paradox, and irony, as noted earlier, it would 
14

be unwise to assume that the first decade of the 21st 

century tells us much that is useful about the whole of 

the century yet to come. Also, it would be imprudent 

to assume that this century must proceed in a generally linear fashion on a course extrapolated from the 

present and most recent past.

It is plausible to stake the claim for the 21st century that “this time it will be different” with respect 

to the nature of strategic history. When one draws 

inferences concerning the future from how bloody 

and unpredictable the 20th century was, one is often 

accused of anachronistic thinking. Because everything that occurs can happen only as a consequence 

of what went before, it is no simple matter to evade 

the snares of determinism. Given that few events are 

truly random even though caused, often it is difficult 

to argue persuasively on behalf of genuinely alternative futures. One suspects that the burden of ex post 

facto knowledge often is fatal for suitably capacious 

historical judgment. It can be said that the knowledge 

of what happened is a curse that the past puts on the 

historian who strives in vain to be properly elastic in 

his thinking, despite his unavoidable grasp of the consequences of decisions.

At this early juncture, I am suggesting what should 

be an unremarkable thesis: that we do not know what 

the 21st century will bring. This argument is best appreciated when we recognize that our predecessors 

did not know what their future would be, and we 

have no convincing reason to suppose that our future 

is any more reliably predictable than was theirs. If 

my argument is held to be plausible, even if contestable, it should at the very least suggest to readers that 

contemporary predictions anticipating the utility or 

disutility of military force in the future are not to be 

trusted.
15

3. The utility of military force varies with culture 

and circumstance.

Over-simple theory has a mighty ability to mislead. 

The simple idea that seems to capture and discipline a 

messy and therefore potentially uncontrollable reality

all too often is simply wrong. Even more dangerous is 

the idea that is sound when applied adaptively with 

high contextual specificity, but almost begs to be misused. Two would-be imperial concepts lie at the core 

of this inquiry: the idea that military force has a utility, 

and the recent popularity of the more than marginally 

problematic idea of strategic culture.18 These two ideas 

are central to the contemporary debate over the challenge to the kind of world order that is most favored 

and is substantially policed by the threat and use of 

American-led military power.

Before critics dash to their computers to complain 

that this author has long argued in praise of both military force as a potent instrument for order, and also 

for the importance of culture—most especially in the 

form of strategic culture—allow me to clarify. An essential concept should not be condemned or retired 

just because it is frequently misused. When adopted 

uncritically and without noticeably perceptive situational awareness, nearly every idea in the strategist’s 

conceptual arsenal can be dangerous. Deterrence, 

arms control, irregular warfare, and peace, inter alia, 

are all perilous to adopt without discrimination. We 

shall return to the subject of strategic culture in the 

pages to follow.

The other idea that resides at the heart of this 

monograph is the proposition that force has utility, 

or should it be “a” utility? By addressing the subject 
16

of the utility of military force in the 21st century, the 

discussion may appear to concede preemptively that 

which really needs to be regarded as problematic. As 

phrased, the proposition certainly implies, I believe 

unsoundly, that military force has “[a?] utility as an 

instrument of policy.” Sometimes, the quality of an 

answer is critically dependent on the sense in the 

question. But in this particular case, an implicit question poorly articulated does serve agreeably to elicit 

a meaningful answer. In fact, the problematic aspects 

of the term “utility of force,” those that might attract 

scholarly criticism (utility to whom, where, when, 

and of what kinds?), act as a magnet for analysis that 

should be stimulating to clarity of thought about policy, strategy, and military tactics.

Despite the popularity and essential integrity of 

the idea that military force has utility for policy, qualities reinforced by General Sir Rupert Smith’s important work on the subject, The Utility of Force (2005), the 

concept should always be accompanied by a notice 

advising “handle with care.”19 Why? The reasons for 

particularly careful handling include the following:

• Military force is not a simple quality/quantity that can be thoughts of and treated as an 

elementary particle, irreducible in substance; it 

is complex and comes in packages of differing 

sizes and contents.

• Warfare can take many forms—most obviously irregular, hybrid, regular, and something 

different with weapons of mass destruction 

(WMD).

• The utility of military force cannot depend only 

upon the quality and quantity of force threatened or applied, but most crucially upon the 

political determinant of required strategic effectiveness.
17

• One size will not fit all. Notwithstanding the 

many features of globalization that have the potential to smooth out some differences among 

still distinctive polities and their societies, the 

strategic contexts and cultures of actual and 

potential belligerents assuredly will be more or 

less asymmetrical.

• Even if, miraculously and improbably, one 

size in utility/disutility of military force were 

to fit nearly all polities, how much would that 

strange cultural fact matter, if and when their 

strategic circumstances were to vary hugely?

• Finally, on this very short list of skeptical 

thoughts, even if one were to sign on to the heroically commanding belief that the degree of 

the utility of military force can, as it were, be 

quantified over time, would one then be willing to claim that there is an unalterable trend 

showing the less military force applied, the 

better?

Still, we must be careful. Plainly, the subject of the 

utility of military force is of the highest importance. In 

addition, there is no doubt that what can be called the 

terms for its engagement as an active instrument of 

policy have changed; indeed, they have been changing for a long time. Recent realities of global communication and post-Cold War circumstances have 

encouraged the notion that “the sky is falling,” all is 

changing. This is not entirely a foolish misperception. 

Times are changing. But the quintessential strategist’s 

question, “So what?” can be augmented by another 

one, “When did they not?” It is necessary to come to 

grips with the cultural and situational dimensions that 

are vital to the sense in our examination, yet which 

frequently are not considered with sufficient rigor.
18

4. “Hard times make for soft principles.”

We return now to the subject of strategic context 

and culture. It may be argued that strategic context 

is what you can make of it, while what you can make 

of it will be influenced strongly by what you bring to 

the task culturally. For an alternative and noticeably 

contrasting argument, you may argue that strategic 

culture is what you choose and are able to do in strategic circumstances that are both somewhat given, as 

well as negotiated competitively by threat and by the 

use of force, or by some positive inducement. The first 

definition suggests a rather fixed relationship between 

an objective strategic context and a no less objective 

strategic culture. The fourth proposition set forth 

above claims that “soft principles,” or permissive culture, as a guide for action correlates with and results 

from stressful circumstances. The claim obviously 

empowers situation over culture in deciding between 

hard and soft principles.20

This theorist is unwilling to jump ship from the 

strategic cultural vessel on which he has been sailing 

for many years, but he is willing to move on from a 

view of the subject that may have been unduly static 

and insufficiently open to recognition of the potency 

of situation, contingency, and the universal nature of 

the individual human factor. In historical practice, 

contexts for the use of force tend by no means to be 

entirely “givens” for policymakers and soldiers. Proposition 4 makes the claim that people are likely to do 

what they believe they must do in order to succeed, 

perhaps just to survive, in the circumstances in which 

they find themselves. If embraced with undue enthusiasm, this assertion-prediction amounts to the claim 
19

that all is permissible under the lash of perceived 

necessity. From a historical perspective, it should be 

immediately apparent that this claim is seriously misleading. To be specific: most security communities are 

able to choose whether or not to use force, even in selfdefense; similarly, when at war, most communities 

are able to exercise some discretion as to how much 

effort, and of what kinds, they will expend in the 

struggle. Of course, the enemy has a vote, “friction” 

happens,21 contingency is active, and the course of the 

warfare will be a bloodily contested path negotiated 

by the competition in violence. However, polities are 

not puppets. And it makes no sense to discuss the utility of force as a great abstraction utterly innocent of 

reference to strategy.

Moral restraint on the style and quantity of warmaking is a dimension—indeed, it can be an enabler—

of strategy, though it is helpful to think of the relationship as being one of interdependence. Moral restraint 

works to limit ferocity, and it thereby enables force to 

be employed to advantage for political purposes.22 Applied ethics, which is to say morality, is a necessary 

gatekeeper against the danger of “absolute war.”23 In 

the absence of such restraint, the nature of war is such 

that reciprocal ferocity is apt to produce an outcome 

of mutual ruination. The utility of force is a dependent 

variable governed primarily by political calculation. 

Whether or not the threat and use of force has utility depends not only on the character of the military 

force available, but rather more on the character of the 

political objectives to be pursued. However, even if 

the conflict in question is believed to be about political 

survival, and not merely advantage and disadvantage, 

it is by no means always the case that it is deemed 

sensible to exert all the force available. Restraint may 
20

be minimal, but still it is rare indeed for it to be absent 

altogether. History does not record many true wars of 

annihilation, wherein even genocide of the literal kind 

is found acceptable and possibly desirable. Such war 

is not entirely unknown, but it and its closer relatives 

in mass atrocity are outlier happenings, not routine 

episodes. The principal reason why this is so is not exactly mysterious—it is self-interest.24 Warfare waged 

ferociously is apt to stimulate the enemy to behave 

likewise.

There is little doubt that there is some sense in the 

fourth preposition. Under the duress of war, polities do authorize their sword arms to behave in ways 

that are deemed legitimate and legal. Necessity is the 

excuse and the explanation; at least it is at present. 

Moreover, the UN Charter that now is the principal 

source of legal authority for the conduct of war, both 

recognizes self-defense as the inherent right of states 

and neglects to oblige them to receive the first blow. In 

international law, on many aspects the right to fight is 

notably discretionary.25

Notwithstanding the existence of a formidable 

body of laws, rules, norms, and customs that have 

been conflated by scholars into the compound concept 

of the “war convention,” the fact remains that political behavior regarding the use of force is governed far 

more by considerations of prudent self-interest than it 

is by legal or ethical codes.26 Fortunately, such codes 

for restraint that now are extant generally function to 

serve the interests of belligerents. But this fact should 

not be permitted to obscure another fact, which is that 

when polities experience crisis and wage war, they 

contend for the right to determine the rules of engagement (ROE) that best suit them. This is a variant on 

Thomas Schelling’s famous description of warfare as 
21

a “diplomacy of violence,” wherein the belligerents 

strive coercively to dominate the rules of the road for 

a particular conflict.27

To return to the main theme, it would be erroneous 

to postulate that either the times or one’s principles 

must have some self-evident immanent quality (for example, the effect of hard times ) that allow little discretion in action. Both times and principles will be givens 

for policymakers and soldiers, but scarcely ever is that 

the end of the story. Policy choice is straightforward, 

even if the options are all more or less unappealing, 

while principles typically require and allow for some 

interpretation. The cultural complexion of a society is 

not fixed, nor does it forbid exceptional behavior that 

may become blessed as authoritative precedent, even 

if it was first chosen in desperation out of a perceived 

brutal necessity. If a nation is behaving strategically, 

which in theory is the norm in human affairs, the utility of force is determined by what amounts to a negotiation between political ends and military means, 

mediated by the ways of strategy. Political ends reign 

and sometimes rule over ways and their means, but 

such authority is limited. Because military force is apt 

to be exceptionally costly when compared with the 

employment of the other grand-strategic instruments 

of policy, typically today its use requires an unusually 

strong justification.

However, to record this reality is not to argue that 

such force has lost utility, and still less is it to suggest that military force is yesterday’s policy weapon. 

Nonetheless, it is valid to argue that the use of force is 

more costly today than was the case in the past. Ironically, the declining domain of the legitimacy of military force, and the diminishing discretion accorded 

over style of military use, render force particularly 
22

attractive to some belligerents. As political theater, 

expressive violence as a form of military force has no 

obviously superior rivals. Americans should not be 

surprised by the large measure of plausibility in this 

proposition. History, including contemporary history, shows that ethics are notably situational.28 This 

is an unhappy reflection on our species, but it is one 

that is difficult to oppose convincingly. If we are sufficiently desperate, or angry and vengeful, we are probably capable of just about any character of nastiness. 

The proposition that military force has lost much of 

its utility is, alas, persuasive only with reference to a 

historical context wherein the perceived necessity for 

its large-scale employment is low and believed to be 

trending ever lower. As of this moment, there are no 

thoroughly compelling reasons to believe that “hard 

times” are now definitively ended, or that much harder times may well lie in the not far distant future. Once 

this claim is granted a serious audience, the fragility 

and imprudence of the argument for the decreasing 

utility of military force is revealed. The emperor is 

conceptually naked.

5. Warfare may be strategic surgery conducted under law for political ends, but also it is brute force 

or violence.

War is a legal condition that is defined most particularly by the fact that its motivation must be political. But it has the phenomenon of organized violence 

as a defining characteristic. Strictly speaking, force 

is made manifest in immediate consequence as violence. Force falls a little way short of being a euphemism for violence; admittedly, there is some daylight 

in meaning between the two terms. However, official 
23

references to violence done by our soldiers are eschewed by and large for reasons far removed from a 

commitment to clarity in the use of language. Liberal 

democracies today are not comfortable employing the 

inherently illiberal means that reside ready for use in 

the basket of options latent in military capabilities. 

There is tension between the high purposes frequently 

expressed in terms of values, and the low means by 

which they sometimes have to be advanced. This tension is revealed in the complexity of key relationships 

that lurk within the compound concept of the contemporary world order. This grand concept is a conflation 

of the following dimensions: 

• Political order

• Legal order

• Social-cultural and moral order

• Military strategic order.

The discussion here pertains to the order of the 

social scientist, not the physical scientist. Everything 

impacts on everything else. As states rise and fall, they 

tend to provoke considerable disorder. In fact, it is 

necessary to recognize that world order, like culture, 

is ever in motion; it is always becoming something 

somewhat different. World order should be understood in the terms comparable to those with which 

Sheila Jager explains culture, namely, as “an on-going 

process of negotiation between past and present.”29

This “negotiation” can involve the “diplomacy of 

violence,” to borrow again from Schelling. But liberal 

democracies today—and even yesterday—have difficulty understanding that the dynamism and complex 

processes of world order require support by the threat 

and occasional use of military force.
24

The black heart of the dilemma driving this discussion is the sheer nastiness of warfare (unpleasantness 

is far too mild a word). The dilemma that good people 

sometimes need to be ready and able to resort to bad 

means is typically resolved in one or both of two ways. 

One is that the military tools of violence are washed 

clean enough by the legitimate and virtuous purposes 

for which they are applied. The other is that the evil of 

the death and destruction wrought by military force 

is mitigated by a variety of means—technical, tactical, 

operational, strategic, legal, ethical, and political.

There are problems great and small with both of 

the approaches just cited for the laundering of war 

and warfare. A major difficulty with the long-standing 

and worthy endeavor to provide a hedge of technical 

restraints on war through variants upon the theme of 

“just war,” is that the endeavor legitimizes, as well 

as constrains, the right to fight. Moreover, efforts to 

make the challenge of war an ethical matter and a legal one are ultimately doomed to failure. The reason 

should not be too difficult to grasp. Wars are not about 

ethics or law. This is not to deny that ethical traditions 

and a moral dimension, as well as legal argument, are 

relevant to public discourse and hence can have political and strategic implications. The point is that war is 

not fundamentally an ethical or a legal phenomenon 

despite the powerful influence that moral and legal arguments can have, especially in post facto debate. Individuals, organized groups, societies, politics, nations, 

and states always operate with mixed motivations. 

There are few, if any, causes for which there is and can 

be no justification, at least in some minds. True, there 

is some sense in the concepts of a common humanity, 

of people everywhere constituting a moral community, and of a universal international law. However, 
25

our enthusiasm for these noble ideals needs to be disciplined by recognition of the severe practical limits 

on their effective domain. And the problem lies not 

only in the frequency with which these grand conceptions are honored in the breach, but rather in the fact 

that each of them lends itself to contestable interpretation and hence exploitation as claimed justification for 

misdeeds. To make the matter plain beyond doubt, I 

am suggesting that international law provides a hunting license for those who wish to shoot, while moral 

argument is apt to be inherently contestable.30

If law and ethics are weak reeds to lean upon in 

taming military force (or violence), what can be said 

of technology, tactics, and strategy? Is it possible to 

civilize warfare, to wage war without the death and 

destruction imposed in warfare? The answer is no. 

However, warfare produces a spectrum of pain ranging from the precise and probably very sharp, all the 

way to blunt mega-economy size. The citizen as practicing ethicist has to ask himself whether quantity affects quality, in moral terms? Is military force more 

usable when it is applied carefully, in small measured 

amounts against objectively guilty targets? Whether 

military force is useful, as well as usable, is another 

matter, albeit a connected one. Plainly, military force 

has little utility if it is judged unusable on moral, legal, 

or political, grounds. In such circumstances, military 

force effectively is removed from the table of available 

options for grand strategy, meaning that its deterrent, 

preventive, and denial potential will be forfeit. 

A problem, probably the problem, with technical, 

tactical, and strategic bundles of efforts to render warfare more acceptable to the liberal conscience, is that 

they must fail.31 As the violent events of this century’s 

early years remind us, even in an era when military 
26

force can be employed with unparalleled precision 

and calibration, force still manifests as violence that 

does damage and causes pain and death. One might 

have hoped that when America came to wage war 

with only regular volunteer soldiers, and to fight in 

the kinds of conflicts and in ways such that casualties 

would be unprecedentedly low by national historical 

standards, military force would be inoculated against 

serious ethical or political challenge. I must hasten 

to add, however, that the use of military force nearly 

always will be challengeable on political or strategic 

grounds. However, one might have expected a military instrument comprising only military professionals and applying force with high discrimination and 

discretion to be a readily usable and fairly noncontroversial tool of policy. Such has not proved to be the 

case.

It is of political and arguably of moral significance 

that military force can deliver a more precise blow 

than ever before. But in public discourse on military 

force, the noun is apt to trump the adjective. The bar 

is now much higher for acceptable instrumental violence. However, the issue here being social science 

and not physical science, one must acknowledge the 

strong probability that the moral judgment involved 

here is heavily situational, politically and strategically speaking. When Chancellor Otto von Bismarck 

observed that the Balkans were not worth the bones of 

a single Pomeranian grenadier, he flagged most helpfully the point that I must emphasize, namely, the intimate relationship between costs and expected gains. 

The utility of military force does not have a fixed-determinant value for a polity in a particular historical 

period. Rather, that utility must be estimated, meaning guessed, in particular cases at particular times—

and one answer will not serve for all occasions.
27

Clausewitz warned against the perils of mistaking 

the character of a war for something that it is not, or 

trying to transform war into something that is alien 

to its nature.32 It is in the nature of war to be violent. 

A military instrument may be capable of precise employment, but it remains a military instrument whose 

function is violence, notwithstanding the purposes 

for which it may be committed. The attendant political intentions are to be realized by military achievement.33 Many scholars and other commentators have 

made the serious taxonomic error of inadvertently, innocently, treating war (and warfare) as though it were 

a branch of ethics or law. Their worthy efforts thus to 

tame war continue to be frustrated because the mission literally is impossible. Warfare as applied ethics 

or as “lawfare” inevitably is an illusion because it is in 

the DNA of war, as it were, to be political. The more 

thoroughgoing projects aimed at controlling and perhaps even eliminating war by means of ethical and 

legal restraints, choose to ignore the enduring reality 

that politics is the engine of war. In practice, warfare 

can escape political control and truly assume a purpose that is almost wholly self-regarding and autonomous. Although such a pathology is a real danger, 

however, it cannot threaten the normative point that 

warfare ought to be governed by politics, rather than 

vice versa. Effective legal restraint on war requires that 

there be a prior moral community, while the necessary moral community can exist and function as such 

only on the foundation of a notable measure of political community.34 Military force has utility for reasons 

that ultimately are political by definition. Thus the 

logic of war matters more than does the grammar of 

war, though the latter is always of significance, since 

by definition it must entail threat, death and damage.35
28

6. Soft power substantially is not discretionary and 

the concept is more likely to mislead than to enlighten.

Soft power is a heroically imprecise concept, save 

only with respect to what it is not—hard power. If 

hard power is defined as the ability purposefully to 

inflict pain or to reward in the pursuit of influence, it 

is convenient and plausible to identify it with military 

and economic instruments of policy. Therefore, its opposite, soft power, is the ability to achieve influence 

by means other than military and economic. Joseph 

S. Nye, Jr., has been the principal spokesman for soft 

power. He explains as follows: 

Everyone is familiar with hard power. We know 

that military and economic might often get others to 

change their position. Hard power can rest on inducement (“carrots”) or threats (“sticks”). But sometimes 

you can get the outcomes you want without tangible 

threats or payoffs. The indirect way to get what you 

want has sometimes been called “the second face of 

power.” A country may obtain the outcomes it wants 

in world politics because other countries—admiring 

its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level 

of prosperity and openness—want to follow it. In this 

sense, it is also important to set the agenda and attract 

others in world politics, and not only to force them 

to change by threatening military force or economic 

sanctions. This soft power—getting others to want the 

outcomes that you want—co-opts people rather than 

coerces them.36

Nye did not discover the seemingly glittering gem 

that is the idea of soft power, and he makes no attempt 

to suggest otherwise. We can say that he was the first 
29

to present the idea in full analytical rigor. Soft power 

has been enjoyed and exercised from the very beginning of human social interaction. The concept attracts 

attention today largely because it appears to offer an 

approach to the achievement of influence in world 

affairs that is complementary, and possibly even alternative, to that exercised through hard military and 

economic power.

Before proceeding further, it is essential to grasp 

the particular issue that we must regard as the examination question for this monograph. Specifically, the 

question is whether or not soft power can and should 

substitute for hard power. Further, if some substitution is possible, what are likely to be the advantages 

and disadvantages of each course, that is, of the United 

States achieving influence either “softly” or by means 

of the pain and reward of hard-tempered power? Let 

us explore the proposition that there is, or could be, a 

soft power substitute for hard military power. Whether or not military power retains an absolute utility, it 

may be determined that soft power can be as useful, or 

more so, and probably at only a fraction of the cost. In 

such comparisons, it is important not to be captured 

analytically by the posing of unhelpful mutual exclusives: soft power or hard power; utility or disutility; 

success or failure. 

Soft power is potentially a dangerous idea not 

because it is unsound, which it is not, but rather for 

the faulty inference that careless or unwary observers draw from it. Such inferences are a challenge to 

theorists because they are unable to control the ways 

in which their ideas will be interpreted and applied 

in practice by those unwary observers. Concepts can 

be tricky. They seem to make sense of what otherwise is intellectually undergoverned space, and thus 
30

potentially come to control pliable minds. Given that 

men behave as their minds suggest and command, it 

is easy to understand why Clausewitz identified the 

enemy’s will as the target for influence.37 Beliefs about 

soft power in turn have potentially negative implications for attitudes toward the hard power of military 

force and economic muscle.

Thus, soft power does not lend itself to careful regulation, adjustment, and calibration. What does this 

mean? To begin with a vital contrast: whereas military 

force and economic pressure (negative or positive) can 

be applied by choice as to quantity and quality, soft 

power cannot. (Of course, the enemy/rival too has a 

vote on the outcome, regardless of the texture of the 

power applied.) But hard power allows us to decide 

how we will play in shaping and modulating the relevant narrative, even though the course of history must 

be an interactive one once the engagement is joined. In 

principle, we can turn the tap on or off at our discretion. The reality is apt to be somewhat different because, as noted above, the enemy, contingency, and 

friction will intervene. But still a noteworthy measure 

of initiative derives from the threat and use of military 

force and economic power. But soft power is very different indeed as an instrument of policy. In fact, I am 

tempted to challenge the proposition that soft power 

can even be regarded as one (or more) among the 

grand strategic instruments of policy.

The seeming validity and attractiveness of soft 

power lead to easy exaggeration of its potency. Soft 

power is admitted by all to defy metric analysis, but 

this is not a fatal weakness. Indeed, the instruments of 

hard power that do lend themselves readily to metric 

assessment can also be unjustifiably seductive. But the 

metrics of tactical calculation need not be strategically 
31

revealing. It is important to win battles, but victory in 

war is a considerably different matter than the simple 

accumulation of tactical successes. Thus, the burden 

of proof remains on soft power: (1) What is this concept of soft power? (2) Where does it come from and 

who or what controls it? and (3) Prudently assessed 

and anticipated, what is the quantity and quality of its 

potential influence? Let us now consider answers to 

these questions.

7. Soft power lends itself too easily to mischaracterization as the (generally unavailable) alternative to 

military and economic power.

The first of the three questions posed above all but 

invites a misleading answer. Nye plausibly offers the 

co-option of people rather than their coercion as the 

defining principle of soft power.38 The source of possible misunderstanding is the fact that merely by conjuring an alternative species of power, an obvious but 

unjustified sense of equivalence between the binary 

elements is produced. Moreover, such an elementary 

shortlist implies a fitness for comparison, an impression that the two options are like-for-like in their consequences, though not in their methods. By conceptually 

corralling a country’s potentially attractive co-optive 

assets under the umbrella of soft power, one is near 

certain to devalue the significance of an enabling context. Power of all kinds depends upon context for its 

value, but especially so for the soft variety. For power 

to be influential, those who are to be influenced have a 

decisive vote. But the effects of contemporary warfare 

do not allow recipients the luxury of a vote. They are 

coerced. On the other hand, the willingness to be coopted by American soft power varies hugely among 
32

recipients. In fact, there are many contexts wherein 

the total of American soft power would add up in the 

negative, not the positive. When soft power capabilities are strong in their values and cultural trappings, 

there is always the danger that they will incite resentment, hostility, and a potent “blowback.” In those 

cases, American soft power would indeed be strong, 

but in a counterproductive direction. These conclusions imply no criticism of American soft power per se. 

The problem would lie in the belief that soft power is 

a reliable instrument of policy that could complement 

or in some instances replace military force.

8. Soft power is perilously reliant on the calculations and feelings of frequently undermotivated 

foreigners.

The second question above asked about the provenance and ownership of soft power. Nye correctly 

notes that “soft power does not belong to the government in the same degree that hard power does.” He 

proceeds sensibly to contrast the armed forces along 

with plainly national economic assets with the “soft 

power resources [that] are separate from American 

government and only partly responsive to its purposes.”39 Nye cites as a prominent example of this disjunction in responsiveness the fact that “[i]n the Vietnam 

era . . . American government policy and popular 

culture worked at cross-purposes.”40 Although soft 

power can be employed purposefully as an instrument of national policy, such power is notably unpredictable in its potential influence, producing net benefit or harm. Bluntly stated, America is what it is, and 

there are many in the world who do not like what it 

is. The U.S. Government will have the ability to proj-
33

ect American values in the hope, if not quite confident 

expectation, that “the American way” will be found 

attractive in alien parts of the world. Our hopes would 

seem to be achievement of the following: (1) love and 

respect of American ideals and artifacts (civilization); 

(2) love and respect of America; and (3) willingness to 

cooperate with American policy today and tomorrow. 

Admittedly, this agenda is reductionist, but the cause 

and desired effects are accurate enough. Culture is as 

culture does and speaks and produces. The soft power 

of values culturally expressed that others might find 

attractive is always at risk to negation by the evidence 

of national deeds that appear to contradict our cultural persona.

Moreover, no contemporary U.S. government 

owns all of America’s soft power—a considerable 

understatement. Nor do contemporary Americans 

and their institutions own all of their country’s soft 

power. America today is the product of America’s 

many yesterdays, and the worldwide target audiences 

for American soft power respond to the whole of the 

America that they have perceived, including facts, legends, and myths.41 Obviously, what they understand 

about America may well be substantially untrue, certainly it will be incomplete. At a minimum, foreigners 

must react to an American soft power that is filtered 

by their local cultural interpretation. America is a future-oriented country, ever remaking itself and believing that, with the grace of God, history moves forward 

progressively toward an ever-better tomorrow. This 

optimistic American futurism both contrasts with foreigners’ cultural pessimism—their golden ages may 

lie in the past, not the future—which prevails in much 

of the world and is liable to mislead Americans as to 
34

the reception our soft power story will have.42 Many 

people indeed, probably most people, in the world 

beyond the United States have a fairly settled view of 

America, American purposes, and Americans. This locally held view derives from their whole experience of 

exposure to things American as well as from the features of their own “cultural thoughtways” and history 

that shape their interpretation of American-authored 

words and deeds, past and present.43

This is not to say that soft power is unimportant or 

invariably misapprehended. Perceptions of America 

can and do alter over time. But the soft power of ideas 

and of practices that non-Americans may be persuaded to adopt and possibly adapt with consequences 

favorable for U.S. interests, do not constitute a policy 

instrument (or basket of such instruments) seriously 

comparable to military force. The greatest among history’s great powers have usually been attractive civilizations worthy of admiration and emulation as well 

as potent coercers.44 Many foreigners have desired to 

join the contemporary winner not only for reasons of 

crude self-interest, but also to share the hegemonic 

power’s style of living and advanced thought. The 

flattery of imitation has an ancient historical lineage. 

Imperial rule as well as the less mandatory hegemonic 

influence has always been manifested in the practice of more or less voluntary co-option of those who 

deemed it prudent, advantageous, and generally sensible to “follow the leader.”

All great powers should command respect, and not 

infrequently they are also feared. But few genuinely 

inspire a desire in others to emulate them culturally, 

save for reasons of anticipated material advantage. 

For example, China today does serve as a model worthy of respect for its thus far successful blending of 
35

economic advance with tight political control. However, such respect rests upon no normative element 

beyond the values of greed and political discipline 

(values refer only to that which is valued). The Chinese practice of governance might just possibly be 

an example of soft power, but to label it thus betrays 

democratic values. One could as well say that Benito 

Mussolini’s Italy enjoyed some soft-power benefit as 

an example of strong anti-democratic rule. Indeed, the 

brutal modernist dictatorships of communism, fascism, and nazism, as well as their more or less pale 

reflections outside Europe, provided much evidence 

of soft power. Dictatorial leaders and party functionaries adopted and adapted foreign ideas of a firm 

hand both because they appeared to work well, and 

because the ideas of leadership, social discipline, and 

a congeries of repressive measures held quite genuine 

appeal. When Americans today think about the appeal of soft power, they often forget that the concept is 

content-free. It is about voluntary co-option for reason 

of an attraction of values, but it says nothing about 

the particular values that are borrowed and somewhat 

nationalized. A liking for genocide of the “unworthy” 

has been known to have appeal across political and 

cultural frontiers. Soft power is not by definition only 

the soft power of humane liberal values.

It bears repeating because it passes unnoticed that 

culture, and indeed civilization itself, are dynamic, 

not static phenomena. They are what they are for 

good and sufficient local geographical and historical 

reasons, and cannot easily be adapted to fit changing 

political and strategic needs. For an obvious example, 

the dominant American strategic culture, though allowing exceptions, still retains its principal features, 

the exploitation of technology and mass.45 These fea-
36

tures can be pathological when circumstances are not 

narrowly conducive to their exploitation. Much as it 

was feared only a very few years ago that, in reaction 

to the neglect of culture for decades previously, the 

cultural turn in strategic studies was too sharp, so 

today there is a danger that the critique of strategic 

culturalism is proceeding too far.46 The error lies in the 

search for, and inevitable finding of, “golden keys” 

and “silver bullets” to resolve current versions of enduring problems. Soft-power salesmen have a potent 

product-mix to sell, but they fail to appreciate the reality that American soft power is a product essentially 

unalterable over a short span of years. As a country 

with a cultural or civilizational brand that is unique 

and mainly rooted in deep historical, geographical, 

and ideational roots, America is not at liberty to emulate a major car manufacturer and advertise an extensive and varied model range of persuasive soft-power 

profiles. Of course, some elements of soft power can 

be emphasized purposefully in tailored word and 

deed. However, foreign perceptions of the United 

States are no more developed from a blank page than 

the American past can be retooled and fine-tuned for 

contemporary advantage. Frustrating though it may 

be, a country cannot easily escape legacies from its 

past.

9. The domain for the policy utility of soft power 

typically is either structurally permissive of easy 

success, or is unduly resistant to such influence.

The third fundamental question about soft power 

in need of answer can best be posed in only two words, 

“So what?” The combined fallacies of misnaming and 

over-simplification that threaten the integrity and utility of the concept of soft power are more than merely 
37

an academic itch that can be scratched into oblivion. 

The soft power concept is sufficiently valid intellectually that its contestable evidential base in history and 

thus its true fragility are easily missed. To explain its 

logic: soft power resides in the ability to co-opt the 

willing rather than to coerce or compel the reluctant; 

American soft power attracts non-Americans because 

it represents or advances values, ideas, practices, and 

arrangements that they judge to be in their interest, 

or at least to which they feel some bond of affinity. 

Therefore, the soft power of the American hegemon is 

some conflation of perceived interests with ideological association (by and large more tacit than explicit).

Full-blown, the argument holds, first, that America 

(for example) gains useful political clout if and when 

foreigners who matter highly to U.S. national security 

share important American understandings, values, 

and preferences. The thesis proceeds in its second step 

to package this thus far commonsense proposition under the banner of “soft power”; it is now dangerously 

objectified, as if giving something a name causes it to 

exist. Next, the third and most problematic step in the 

argument is the logical leap that holds that American 

soft power, as existing reality—what it is, and its effects—can be approached and treated usefully as an 

instrument of national policy. This is an attractive 

proposition: it is unfortunate that its promise is thoroughly unreliable. The problem lies in the extensive 

middle region that lies between a near harmony of 

values and perceived interests and, at the opposite end 

of the spectrum, a close to complete antagonism between those values and interests. Historical evidence 

as well as reason suggest that the effective domain of 

soft power is modest. The scope and opportunity for 

co-option by soft power are even less. People and polities have not usually been moved far by argument, 
38

enticement, and attractiveness. There will be some attraction to, and imitation of, a great power’s ideas and 

practical example, but this fact has little consequence 

for the utility of military force. Indeed, one suspects 

that on many occasions what might be claimed as a 

triumph for soft power is in reality no such thing. Societies and their political leaders may be genuinely 

attracted to some features of American ideology and 

practice, but the clinching reason for their agreement 

to sign on to an American position or initiative will be 

that the United States looks convincing as a guardian 

state and coalition leader.

It is not difficult to identify reasons why military 

force seems to be less useful as a source of security 

than it once was. But it is less evident that soft power 

can fill the space thus vacated by the military and 

economic tools of grand strategy. Soft power should 

become more potent, courtesy of the electronic revolution that enables a networked global community. The 

ideological, political, and strategic consequences of 

such globalization, however, are not quite as benign 

as one might have predicted. It transpires that Francis 

Fukuyama was wrong; the age of ideologically fueled 

hostility has not passed after all.47 Also, it is not obvious that the future belongs to a distinctively Western 

civilization.48 It is well not to forget that the Internet is 

content-blind, and it advertises, promotes, and helps 

enable bloody antagonism in addition to the harmony 

of worldview that many optimists have anticipated. 

It does not follow from all this that the hard power of 

military force retains, let alone increases, its utility as 

an instrument of policy. But assuredly it does follow 

that the historical motives behind defense preparation 

are not greatly diminished. Thus, there is some noteworthy disharmony between the need for hard power 
39

and its availability, beset as it increasingly is by liberal 

global attitudes that heavily favor restraint.

10. Hard and soft power should be complementary, 

but unless one is strategically competent, neither 

will have high utility for policy, either singly or 

“jointly.”

An inherent and unavoidable problem with a 

country’s soft power is that it is near certain to be 

misassessed by the politicians who attempt to govern 

soft power’s societal owners and carriers. Few thoroughly encultured Americans are likely to undervalue 

“the American way” in many of its aspects as a potent source of friendly self-co-option abroad. Often, 

this self-flattering appreciation will be well justified 

in reality. But as an already existing instrument of 

American policy, the soft power of ideas and practical 

example is fraught with the perils of self-delusion. If 

one adheres to an ideology that is a heady mixture of 

Christian ethics (“one nation, under God . . .”), democratic principles, and free market orthodoxy, and if 

one is an American, which is to say if one is a citizen of 

a somewhat hegemonic world power that undeniably 

has enjoyed a notably successful historical passage to 

date, then it is natural to confuse the national ideology 

with a universal creed. Such confusion is only partial, 

but nonetheless it is sufficiently damaging as to be a 

danger to national strategy.

Since it is fallacious to assume that American values truly are universal, the domain of high relevance 

and scope for American soft power to be influential is 

distinctly limited. If one places major policy weight 

on the putative value for policy of American soft 

power, one needs to be acutely alert to the dangers of 
40

an under-recognized ethnocentrism born of cultural 

ignorance. This ignorance breeds an arrogant disdain 

for evidence of foreigners’ lack of interest in being coopted to join American civilization. The result of such 

arrogance predictably is political and even military 

strategic counterreaction. It is a case of good intentions gone bad when they are pursued with indifference toward the local cultural context.

Some people have difficulty grasping the unpalatable fact that much of the world is not receptive to 

any American soft power that attempts to woo it to 

the side of American interests. Not all rivalries are resolvable by ideas, formulas, or “deals” that seem fair 

and equitable to us. There are conflicts wherein the 

struggle is the message, to misquote Marshal MacLuhan, with value in the eyes of local belligerents. Not 

all local conflicts around the world are amenable to 

the calming effect of American soft power. True militarists of left and right, secular and religious, find intrinsic value in struggle and warfare, as A. J. Coates 

has explained all too clearly. 

The self-fulfilment and self-satisfaction that war generates derive in part from the religious or ideological 

significance attributed to it and from the resultant 

sense of participating in some grand design. It may 

be, however, that the experience of war comes to be 

prized for its own sake and not just for the great ends 

that it serves or promotes. For many, the excitement 

unique to war makes pacific pursuits seem insipid by 

comparison. This understanding and experience of 

moral, psychological, and emotional self-fulfillment 

increase our tolerance for war and threaten its moral 

regulation. It transforms war from an instrumental 

into an expressive activity.49
41

 It is foolish to believe that every conflict contains 

the seeds of its own resolution, merely awaiting suitable watering through co-option by soft power. To be 

fair, similarly unreasonable faith in the disciplinary 

value of (American) military force is also to be deplored.

Returning to the role of strategy, if America is strategically incompetent, it will not matter much which, 

if any, policy instruments are available for execution. 

One must add the codicil that, for good or ill, it is easier to employ military force on behalf of policy than it 

is to attempt to tailor one’s soft power to fit the exact 

need of the political moment. If military force is apt 

to be a blunt instrument that lends itself to producing 

unintended consequences, such indeterminacy of effects pales when compared to the problematic impact 

of the soft power lurking in American civilization. 

There is a monumental arrogance accompanied by a 

breathtaking optimism about the proposition that soft 

power should be an instrument of national policy. Of 

course, one cannot simply dismiss soft power because 

the historical evidence of its partial efficacy is undeniable. Soft power is not an illusion, but it is ever likely 

to be uncontrollable and hence to defy strategic employment. Effects-based planning for grand strategy 

must be so problematic with reference to soft power, 

with its uncertain reception, as to require a large policy-health warning.

As for the complementarity of hard and soft power, there are so many unknowable third- and fourthorder effects, such redundancy of feedback loops, and 

so much genuine indeterminacy of relative weights of 

causal effects that it is extremely difficult to proceed to 

an analytically satisfactory common-sense level of appreciation. Can we distinguish between voluntary cooption for reason of affection or respect, and co-option 
42

because of cynical calculation of material self-interest? 

It is not so much the values and beliefs of foreigners 

that matter, but rather their behavior. States cooperate with each other and sometimes tolerate inflicted 

harm, because they respect the ability and presume a 

willingness on the part of the villainous party to inflict 

yet greater damage. Values are apt to be found compatible with perceived necessity in the rough world of 

politics, domestic and international. The more authority that is accorded hard capabilities for influence, the 

greater the ease with which soft power works its salubrious wonders. Great powers have ever believed that 

they deserve some authority over their geographical 

neighborhood.50 This belief has normative content; it 

is not merely descriptive of relative strength of ability 

to impose political will. The more “rightful” a great 

power’s hegemony is deemed to be by its neighboring 

states and societies, the more influence one should expect of its apparently soft power. Authority accepted 

as legitimate and appropriate should be in scant need 

of military, economic, or other direct forms of enforcement.

However, the complementarity between hard and 

soft power that would seem to produce a regional 

hegemony is apt to fail in the face of the antagonism 

natural among human societies. Neighboring states, 

whether of equal or unequal standing in material assets for power, tend to be antagonists.51 They have 

much more to fight about than do polities distant from 

each other, since both military and cultural menace is 

more proximate and severe. Those among us who are 

attracted by the idea of soft power, most especially 

when the concept is contrasted with military force, 

need to come to terms with the ferocity with which 

civil warfare tends to be prosecuted. The substantial 
43

currency of soft power that multiple communities in a 

single would-be polity share is in practice often overwhelmed by conflict-based ideational and economic 

differences. Americans who are strongly attracted to 

the appealing concept of soft power should reflect 

upon its applicability to their own civil war, the most 

bloody conflict in American history.

11. Soft power and hard power are more mutually 

enabling than they are fungible.

While it is sensible to seek influence abroad as costeffectively as possible, it is only prudent to be modest 

in one’s expectations of the soft power to be secured by 

cultural influence. There are few, if any, absolutes in 

this analysis, and the choices are not strictly either/or. 

Military and economic coercion is not reliable because 

the coercee is at liberty to decline to be coerced, albeit 

at a cost. But influence sought through the target’s exposure to “the American way” is even less likely to 

lend itself to predictable effects-based grand-strategic 

planning. Every polity and society have features in 

which they take pride—and the sources of pride can 

vary widely in ways under-recognized abroad. The 

soft power of America in all its aspects is not entirely 

a power likely to produce American advantage. As 

with all other polities, the United States has exhibited 

a gap between noble collective aspiration and some 

ignoble behavior. Foreign audiences are guided in 

their interpretation of the American reality not by 

an objective standard, but rather through the filter of 

their own local culture. In other words, if one seeks 

to export the American way purposefully as a soft 

power instrument of national policy, one has to recall 

that Americans will not be able to control the images 
44

of the American civilizational message as they will be 

perceived abroad. This is not to say that there is no 

soft power, far from it. Instead, it is to say that such 

power is more like a wild card than a tool of known 

universal utility.

Sad to relate, there is no convincing evidence suggesting an absence of demand for the threat and use 

of military force. I write this in the context of prior acknowledgment of a still burgeoning “war convention” 

that places potential restraints on the use of force. But 

insecurity conditions continue to require the menace 

of military force for their alleviation and occasional 

resolution, even though the supply of such force at 

present is ever problematic. One should not be confused by the trend in a more globalized world toward 

restraining the military force that might be deployed 

by the agents of order. Military force is more costly to 

threaten and employ than it used to be, but it is not 

necessarily always less useful or usable. Indeed, the 

culture shock to liberal Westerners on witnessing the 

exercise of brute force, can have a political value for 

reason of its shocking political incorrectness. Consider the highly aggressive pre-planned use of military 

power by Russia against U.S.-leaning Georgia in 2008. 

For all the negative commentary that Moscow attracted from abroad, the net balance of consequences 

between costs and political rewards probably was significantly weighted in favor of the rewards. Although 

Russia gained respect for its political will by its aggressive behavior, the benefit was less than it might 

have been had the United States and its North Atlantic 

Treaty Organization (NATO) allies not been so actively engaged in their own military coercion during the 

Gulf wars.
45

Some readers might believe mistakenly that I demean or dismiss soft power. This is not so. True, the 

argument advanced here has found soft power to be a 

less useful tool of policy than is popularly supposed, 

but this finding falls a fair distance short of dismissal. 

Considering hard and soft power as partial or complete substitutes for each other, the following uncomfortable conclusions emerge:

• There are cases in which neither soft power 

nor hard power is able to deliver advantage, 

let alone victory. Moreover, it is probable that 

no combination of them could succeed. Scholars usually are able to postulate a miraculously 

effective hypothetical intervention in the sad 

course of history that should have delivered 

success, but such can only be idle speculation.

• Soft power is not a matter of either/or. It is entirely possible for much of American culture 

to be shared and respected, but for that fact to 

count for little with reference to policy choice. 

Societies can penetrate each other deeply with 

some of their values and practices, while simultaneously having a largely conflictual relationship for reason of interests perceived to be incompatible.

• Historically, a context of total mutual disrespect among antagonistic societies and polities 

is unusual. Politics and the interests that drive 

it have a way of suppressing much cultural admiration, let alone affinity. When national interests are perceived as clashing, soft power is 

an early victim. Examples abound, but prominent cases include the rise of Anglo-German 

antagonism from the late 19th century, and that 

of American-Japanese antagonism in the 20th 

century.52
46

• While soft power theory offers the agreeable 

proposition that American values and culture 

generally have some ability to co-opt “others” 

in an attractively economical way, historical 

evidence seems to point in a different direction. 

More accurately, the relationship is one wherein soft power flows to the owner of hard power. 

Thucydides in ca. 400 BC is to be recommended 

as a more reliable guide to international relations and foreign policy in the 21st century than 

is Joseph S. Nye.53

• Soft power is real and might often do some 

good around the edges of policy. But soft power is mainly fool’s gold when it is considered as 

a bona fide instrument of (American) policy.

• But to question the efficacy of soft power is not, 

ipso facto, to praise the utility of military force. 

A challenge for policy in the 21st century reposes in the reality that neither hard nor soft 

power is a reliable policy tool. A key difference 

between the two, though, is that while it is both 

necessary and practicable to regard military 

force as a policy instrument, such cannot be 

claimed for soft power. Unlike American soft 

power, its military power is not an inherent 

given. The capability to threaten and use military power is highly variable, even contingent, 

and requires centralized official direction. Soft 

power is thoroughly different. It is diffuse, substantially “given” and unalterable by sudden 

central decision, and its effects (first, second, 

third order?) on particular foreign audiences 

are not easily predictable.
47

CONCLUSION

The discussion has ranged widely over topics both 

central and modestly tangential to the question of the 

utility of military force in the 21st century. Because this 

analysis has an educational rather than prescriptive 

purpose, the focus has been upon how to think about 

the relevance of military power as an instrument of 

policy—most especially in relation to soft power—as a 

substitute or complement. Five findings merit special 

notice. They contain at least implicit recommendations regarding the utility of military force. Practical 

applicability must, of course, be a function of actual 

historical context. However, the United States and its 

Army are more likely to make wise specific choices if 

they enjoy a secure understanding in general terms. 

General theory, meaning explanation, is essential education for the applied theory known as historical strategies and plans.54

1. Military force is not an anachronism; it is and 

will long remain an essential instrument of policy. 

Military force is not discretionary as an item in the 

policy tool bag. Military force is not always the right 

tool to employ, and even when it is appropriate, there 

is no guarantee that it will be used effectively—but 

these are matters extrinsic to the main point. There 

are conflicts that cannot be resolved politically, sufficiently alleviated by diplomacy or any other nonmilitary means, or settled by some tolerable compromise. 

For reasons amply covered in Thucydides's triptych 

of “fear, honor, and interest,” warfare is a necessary 

option as a sanction against unacceptable behavior by 

hostile polities and other belligerents.55 The fact that 
48

it often does not deliver a politically satisfactory outcome is beside the point. Medicine and surgery do not 

always work as required, either. Public opinion in a 

notably pacifist liberal West tends to favor the attitude 

that military force is anachronistic. The use of force 

is usually held to be evidence of policy failure, since 

wiser policy should have succeeded in prevention. 

This view is as understandable as it is fashionable, but 

still it is wrong. Even wise policy can fail, for example, 

when foreign political leaders decline to be deterred 

despite the obvious dictates of reason. Just as military 

force has a unique ability among policy tools to create 

expensive havoc, so also it has a distinctive capacity to 

enable favorable decisions. The fact that military force 

should be used only with great care and skill does not 

minimize its unique importance. Warfare has shaped 

and reshaped the course of history more significantly 

than has any other impulse in the whole human experience.56

2. Military force is not under threat of obsolescence 

because of the availability of “smart” soft power 

alternatives, but its utility to liberal Western societies is menaced by the imprudent measure of their 

imprudent enthusiasm for placing constraints upon 

their use of it. 

This second finding should not be taken as evidence of a reckless gung-ho attitude toward the threat 

and use of military force. My concern is that our contemporary determination to employ force justly and 

decently is in some danger of imperiling the prospects 

for success in military missions. Of course, military 

force should be used only as necessary and in the 

quantity suitable to its task. The problem today is that 
49

our Western societies are more than a little ambivalent about the official use of force. Since military force 

as an option in the policy tool bag is mandatory for 

public safety, order, and prosperity, the challenge to 

politicians and educated commentators is two-fold. 

On the one hand, it is essential that our military force 

is applied in accordance with reasonable interpretation of “just war” principles. But on the other, it is 

also necessary that our authoritative legal and political interpretations of those principles do not destroy 

our ability to prevail militarily when we must.57 If we 

are not really convinced that we must prevail, then we 

ought not to be fighting. The man in the street, qua 

strategist, needs to understand that General William 

Tecumseh Sherman was correct—war is hell. Warfare 

without pain is an oxymoron.

3. Strategic competency is key to the utility of 

military force for policy, but is less relevant to soft 

power. 

It is not quite valid to argue that strategy is the 

key to the utility of both hard military (and economic) 

power and of soft power. Whereas strategy should direct the military instrument according to the logic of 

ends, ways, and means, soft power by its nature does 

not lend itself to such control. American soft power is 

largely what it is, regardless of official ambitions for 

its effectiveness as a policy tool. The strategy function 

is not entirely irrelevant, in that soft power can be considered in the classic terms, just cited—ends, ways, 

and means. American military power is essentially a 

tamed force (disciplined violence), even though it may 

behave unpredictably in the interactive, dynamic, and 

friction-prone environment of war. The country’s soft 
50

power, however, is notably untamed and untameable. 

Because hard power and soft power roll off the tongue 

as though they are comparable, even largely matching, 

concepts, they are in fact totally asymmetrical, with 

soft power on the short end. The two options are significantly beyond useful comparison. Hard power and 

soft power are indeed two species of the power genus. 

But the differences in all aspects of power generation 

between the two species render the mere act of comparing them itself misleading. From the perspective 

of public policy, military force is owned uniquely by 

legitimate central political authority, whereas most of 

the components of soft power are not grown, owned, 

or controllable at will by policymakers. If military 

force is akin to a domesticated animal, soft power is 

more like one that cannot be domesticated. Soft power 

is a dangerous concept, because it sounds far more usable than it is.

4. There is strategic advantage in moral advantage, 

which translates as a requirement for the use of 

military force to be plainly legitimate. 58

To wage only just wars justly cannot guarantee 

success, but to wage unjust wars unjustly is close to a 

guarantee of failure in the 21st century. The relevant 

law and ethical precepts are clear enough, but they are 

so subject to local interpretation, even when sincerely 

undertaken, that the guidance they provide is a great 

deal less prescriptively useful than they appear to 

promise. Sadly, both law and ethics are found useful 

in practice in good part because they lend themselves 

to permissive self-serving justification by belligerents. 

That said, there is a moral dimension to international 

conflict,59 albeit one that is severely short of objective 
51

and authoritative policing. Ethics are universal, but 

specific ethical philosophies, traditions, and schools 

vary hugely. Much of the universality of ethics disappears down the cracks created by particular cultures, 

local contexts, priorities, values, and habits. Since 

the human will is the most important component of 

fighting power, the readiness of that will to apply itself to the lethal business of warfare has to be a subject of prime strategic importance. We humans are 

moral beings, meaning that we are all more or less in 

thrall to one or more ethical tradition that educates, 

even programs, our moral judgment. Soldiers do not 

fight hard for a cause because that cause objectively 

is “just,” but rather because they believe it to be so. 

If confidence in the rightness of a soldier’s efforts is 

shaken, there are certain to be consequences adverse 

to his or her military effectiveness. The hard power 

of military force is especially vulnerable to enfeeblement by the ill consequences of moral self-doubt. Our 

liberal Western democracies are not warrior societies.60 The values of militarism are not the ones that we 

endorse and encourage, even among our professional 

soldiers. However, in contrast to the European context 

in general, the United States does appear to encourage some attitudes in its military personnel that verge 

upon the militaristic. The frontier between militarism 

and military professionalism is crossed when prowess in warfare is regarded as a value in itself, as expressive achievement, rather than as an instrumental 

value. Properly explained, the behavior of American 

soldiers, including warriors (few soldiers truly are or 

need to be warriors),61 is not “about” warfare; instead 

it is “about” the generation of strategic effects on behalf of the ends of political policy. Liberal Western societies need the services of some warriors—among the 
52

mass of its soldiers—who will deliver military force 

for reasons and in ways that they have no great difficulty understanding as legitimate. If the moral dimension to a contemporary conflict is devalued during the 

ongoing audit of public perception, then the nation’s 

strategic effort is all but certain to be fatally damaged. 

There will be a spiral of self-doubt at home and in the 

field, characterized by diminished military effectiveness, encouragement of the enemy, and an inevitable 

search for guilty people to blame.

5. Soft power tends to co-opt the readily co-optable, 

while hard military power is necessary for more demanding missions. 

Paradox and irony reign over strategic matters.62

It is paradoxical that soft power works well when it 

is not needed, but is irrelevant or nearly so when it 

could make all the difference. America requires hard 

military and economic power, effectively guided by 

good enough strategy, precisely because the country’s soft power does not enjoy universal dominion. 

A world of states, nations, and societies that is not 

immediately recognizable as being at least a simulacrum of the American model of culture and civilization cannot be regarded as an audience palpitating 

for enlightenment. This thought is heretical to many 

Americans who believe we as a nation are on a historical missionary journey for the general improvement 

of Mankind. The American civilization is heavily ideological. Indeed, the whole notion of soft power in its 

appeal to Americans resides in the linked beliefs that: 

(1) our way is the better way, and (2) understanding 

of our way on the part of “Others” will induce, or seduce, them into becoming co-optees to the American 
53

worldview. The basis of the high regard Americans 

are inclined to have for soft power—aside from its low 

cost as compared with military force—lies in cultural 

hubris. It seems rarely to occur to us that we ourselves 

might be more vulnerable to civilizational co-option 

than are some others. Nor are we sure whether our 

apparent co-opting of others by soft power is received 

with genuine appreciation or as a prudent calculation. Overall, although having soft power is always 

welcome, the contexts wherein its presumably benign 

effects would be most useful are precisely those where 

it is least likely to work its magic successfully.

ENDNOTES 

1. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power: Why the 

World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 4.

2. Gavin Lyall, Spy’s Honour, London, UK: Coronet Books, 

1993, p. 51.

3. Clausewitz defines war as “an act of force to compel our 

enemy to do our will.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael 

Howard and Peter Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1976, p. 75 (emphasis in the original).

4. See Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in 

Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, New York: The Free 

Press, 1986; Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich, eds., 

The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession Today, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Jeremy 

Black, Rethinking Military History, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 

2004; Jeremy Black, The Curse of History, London, UK: The Social 

Affairs Unit, 2008; and Margaret Macmillan, The Uses and Abuses 

of History, London, UK: Profile Books, 2009.

5. “Without a theory the facts are silent.” F. A. Hayek, quoted 

in John Keegan, A History of Warfare, London, UK: Hutchinson, 

1993, p. 6.
54

6. For years, possibly decades, I have poured scorn on the 

misleading concept of the “foreseeable future,” but thus far, obviously in vain, given its continuing popularity. See Colin S. Gray, 

Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy, Westport, 

CT: Praeger Security International, 2007, pp. 155-157.

7. See Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 378, London, UK: International Institute for 

Strategic Studies, March 2006.

8. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., quoted in Robert J. McMahon, 

Dean Acheson and the Creation of an American World Order, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009, p. 14.

9. Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the 

Modern Conscience, London, UK: Chatto and Windus, 1998, p. 8.

10. See Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the 

Modern World, London, UK: Allen Lane, 2005.

11. David Kennedy, Of War and Law, Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 2006, pp. 12, 125.

12. See A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997, Chap. 8.

13. Clausewitz, pp. 85-86.

14. To assert this is not to indulge in a crudely “realistic” essentialism. For a short selection from a large literature, see John A. 

Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998; 

Jack Donnelly, Realism and International Relations, Cambridge, 

UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Jonathan Haslam, Realist Thought in International Relations since Machiavelli, New Haven, 

CT: Yale University Press, 2002; and Michael C. Williams, ed., Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau in International 

Relations, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.

15. See Colin S. Gray, “Strategic Thoughts for Defence Planners,” Survival, Vol. 52, No. 3, June-July 2010, pp. 159-178, which 

might lend itself to the charge of a lack of empathy.
55

16. See Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge: Therory for Practice, 

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, for the full story.

17. To cite a personal example, I was informed recently by 

a very distinguished retired four-star general that the challenges 

of cyberspace are so novel that past experience is irrelevant. It 

was, and remains, my view that cyber power in any and all of its 

aspects is thoroughly comprehensible within the framework of 

the general theory of strategy (as are land power, sea power, air 

power, and space power). The need to understand the implications of new kinds of technology is an entirely familiar demand 

on our imagination. This is not to claim that cyberspace, let alone 

cyber warfare, is anything other than an intellectually undergoverned domain at present.

18. Especially useful studies include Lawrence Sondhaus, 

Strategic Culture and Ways of War, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 

2006; Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner, and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking, 

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; and, for a strongly sceptical view, Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through 

Western Eyes, London, UK: C. Hurst, 2009.

19. Smith, The Utility of Force.

20. An essentialist approach to culture is critiqued robustly in 

Porter, Military Orientalism.

21. Clausewitz, pp. 119-121.

22. This logic is developed powerfully in Coates, The Ethics of 

War; Christopher Coker, Ethics and War in the 21st Century, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 2008, is also relevant.

23. See Clausewitz, pp. 488-489, 579.

24. See Coker, Ethics and War in the 21st Century, p. 23.

25. This is the principal message in Kennedy, Of War and Law.
56

26. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument 

with Historical Illustrations, 3rd Ed., New York: Basic Books, 2000, 

Part 3.

27. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1966, Chap. 1.

28. See the discussion in Colin S. Gray, “Moral Advantage, 

Strategic Advantage?” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 33, No. 

3, June 2010, pp. 333-365.

29. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, On the Uses of Cultural Knowledge, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

November 2007, p. 9.

30. See Kennedy, Of War and Law, Chap. 3.

31. I am a little embarrassed to employ such a reductionist 

term as the liberal conscience, but it enjoys such distinguished 

endorsement and is so familiar that I choose to discount my reservations. See the classic treatment in Michael Howard, War and the 

Liberal Conscience, London, UK: Hurst Publishers, 2008.

32. Clausewitz, p. 88. The Prussian’s insight is deep, though 

he did invite confusion with his rather flexible employment of the 

concept of the nature of war. I believe it is important to distinguish 

clearly and consistently between war’s enduring nature and its 

ever-changing character. A somewhat more permissive view of 

the variability of war’s nature is favored in Antulio J. Echevarria 

II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 55-58. Echevarria is more in tune with the 

master than am I on this arguably important issue. To march in 

step with Clausewitz is not necessarily to ensure correctness, but 

usually it is intellectually safer than the alternative.

33. “The political object—the original motive for the war—

will thus determine both the military objective to be reached and 

the amount of effort it requires.” Clausewitz, p. 81. Warfare is 

instrumental force that should have political meaning or else it 

would be something other than warfare. However, this political 

sense cannot somehow achieve a miraculous change in the violent 

nature of what is done on its behalf.
57

34. See the excellent discussion in Coates, The Ethics of War, 

especially p. 60.

35. Clausewitz, p. 605.

36. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World 

Politics, New York: Public Affairs, 2004, p. 5.

37. Clausewitz, p. 75.

38. Nye, The Paradox of American Power, p. 9.

39. Ibid., p. 11.

40. Ibid.

41. Legends need to be related to some factual past, myths do 

not.

42. An interesting historical (1920s and 1930s) study of cultural pessimism is that of Richard J. Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain 

and the Crisis of Civilization, London, UK: Penguin Books, 2010.

43. For the wonderful term “cultural thoughtways,” I am 

indebted to Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, London, UK: 

Croom Helm, 1979, p. 14.

44. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: 

Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, New York: 

Random House, 1987; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great 

Power Politics, New York: W. W. Norton, 2001; and Jeremy Black, 

Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony: The World Order Since 

1500, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 2008.

45. See Colin S. Gray, National Security Dilemmas: Challenges 

and Opportunities, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009, Chap. 

6.

46. Porter, Military Orientalism, is right in its critique, but only 

up to a point. See also the remarkable, culturally rich memoir, 

Pete Blaber, The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former 
58

Delta Force Commander, New York: Berkeley Caliber, 2008. Both 

books are well written, but the latter has the added virtue of being a highly entertaining read, as well as a military cultural and 

tactical gold mine.

47. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 

New York: The Free Press, 1992. Also see Michael Mandelbaum, 

The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century, New York: Public Affairs, 2002.

48. Agree with it or not, Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of 

Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon 

and Schuster, 1996, is a significant book that addresses some very 

large and enduring questions.

49. Coates, The Ethics of War, pp. 50-51.

50. In the apposite words of historian Jeremy Black, “Powerful states, such as China, India and Russia, expect to dominate 

their neighbours and do not appreciate opposition to this aspiration, as Russia has demonstrated in the Caucasus in the 1990s and 

2000s—for example, in its aggressive policy towards Georgia.” 

Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony, p. 231.

51. For a classic, indeed, classical, formal presentation of the 

relevant geometrical geostrategic logic, see Kautilya, The Arthashastra, L. N. Rangarajan, trans., New Delhi, India: Penguin Books 

India, 1992, pp. 551-563.

52. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German Antagonism, 

1860-1914, London, UK: George Allan and Unwin, 1980; and Porter, Military Orientalism, especially Chap. 3 (on Western views of 

imperial Japan).

53. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive 

Guide to The Peloponnesian War, Robert B. Strassler, Rev. trans., 

New York: The Free Press, 1996; Nye, Soft Power.

54. See Gray, The Strategy Bridge, Chap. 1.

55. Thucydides, p. 43.
59

56. This regrettably unavoidable thesis underpins Colin S. 

Gray, War, Peace, and International Relations: An Introduction to 

Strategic History, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 2007.

57. Not all the indicators of official Western attitudes toward 

the use of force are negative. For example, it was agreeable to read 

that despite the popularity of the view that we cannot kill our way 

to victory in Afghanistan, Britain’s SAS, at least, have certainly 

been allowed to do their best to accomplish just that. See Thomas 

Harding and Ben Farmer, “SAS kills Taliban ‘on an industrial 

scale’,” The Daily Telegraph (London, UK), September 1, 2010, p. 

13. The killing or other removal from the action of important enemy cadres is vital for success in counterinsurgency (COIN). Of 

course, COIN is about politics, and in the absence of a suitable 

political framework for the use of force, victory is not achievable. 

However, even in pervasively political COIN, the enemy leadership needs to be militarily disabled by much well-targeted physical elimination. Leadership is a key to insurgents’ success.

58. See Gray, “Moral Advantage, Strategic Advantage?” for 

detailed explanation and argument.

59. Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat: A History of World War II, 

London, UK: HarperPress, 2010, is a powerful recent contribution 

to the literature.

60. See Christopher Coker, Waging War Without Warriors? The 

Changing Culture of Military Conflict, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 

Publishers, 2002; and The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the 

War on Terror, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 2007.

61. See Rune Henriksen, “Warriors in Combat—What Makes 

People Actively Fight in Combat?”The Journal of Strategic Studies,

Vol. 30, No. 2, April 2007, pp. 187-223. Also highly relevant is the 

classic study-memoir by J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on 

Men in Battle, New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

62. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, 

Rev. Ed., Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001, p. xii. Since first reading this book, I have come to 

appreciate more and more how right Luttwak is in his insistence 

on the importance of paradox and irony in strategy.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Gregg F. Martin

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

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Director of Research

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Author

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