CSIS Commission on Smart Power

The Report of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power

The report of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power, produced in 2007, followed the recognition, as Armitage and Nye state in the introduction, that since 9/11 the US had been “exporting fear and anger rather than… hope and optimism.”(p 10) The first section of the report gives ample evidence of how attitudes to the US changed from being very largely favourable in 2002 to being almost everywhere unfavourable in 2007 (p 18). The section continues to give evidence of the “waning influence” of the US on the world stage.

The second, longer section outlines the commission’s “Smart Power Strategy,” which means spending a great deal more of the budget on “soft” power, trying to improve relations, targeting world health concerns, targeting global warming, using public diplomacy to improve access to international knowledge and increasing trade without having head-on collisions with trading rivals such as China.

The commission recommends all these measures as a necessary alternative to “hard” power in restoring America to a place of leadership in the world.

The authors do not seem, at any point, to doubt whether America should be leading the world; their concern is that they seem to have lost support in doing that, and it is now time to regain it. The repeated emphasis throughout is not so much on the world perhaps becoming a more peaceful place, or even America becoming a more peaceful place, but on America becoming “a smarter and stronger power”. (Todman, p52)

There is a surprised, and patronising, comment on page 37, that many European nations are ahead of the US in their understanding that world progress is necessary for their own development. The emphasis throughout the report is on the US “wanting to inspire people in other countries”. It is about the US being the donor (though they have to admit they are a rather mean donor compared to many other nations), but at no point does the report suggest that the US itself perhaps needs to learn more about the rest of the world.