One of the more striking features of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy—not the chosen ends, but its preferred means—is its absolute confidence in America’s hard power and its near-total disdain for what my late colleague Joseph Nye called “soft power.” Nye defined the latter as “the power of attraction,” as a nation’s ability to get others to do what it wanted because it possessed qualities that made others want to emulate it, associate with it, and follow its lead. States with a lot of hard power could compel others through force and intimidation or by offering aid or protection; states with an abundance of soft power enjoyed greater influence because others wanted to be like them, agreed with the principles they stood for, or viewed them as fashionable, successful, and even “hip.”
A good realist like me is hardly going to denigrate the importance of hard power; on the contrary, it’s hard to have lots of soft power without substantial hard power to back it up. But you can have plenty of hard power and little or no soft power, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia has shown. Ideally, a state would like to have a lot of both, because having a lot of soft power means others will be naturally inclined to do what you want and you won’t have to use your hard power very often. Nye believed America’s combination of hard and soft power gave it enormous advantages when dealing with the outside world, which is one of the reasons he was optimistic about America’s future and skeptical of those predicting its decline. Yet by the end of his long career, even he had begun to worry about what was happening to America’s global appeal.
One of the more striking features of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy—not the chosen ends, but its preferred means—is its absolute confidence in America’s hard power and its near-total disdain for what my late colleague Joseph Nye called “soft power.” Nye defined the latter as “the power of attraction,” as a nation’s ability to get others to do what it wanted because it possessed qualities that made others want to emulate it, associate with it, and follow its lead. States with a lot of hard power could compel others through force and intimidation or by offering aid or protection; states with an abundance of soft power enjoyed greater influence because others wanted to be like them, agreed with the principles they stood for, or viewed them as fashionable, successful, and even “hip.”
A good realist like me is hardly going to denigrate the importance of hard power; on the contrary, it’s hard to have lots of soft power without substantial hard power to back it up. But you can have plenty of hard power and little or no soft power, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia has shown. Ideally, a state would like to have a lot of both, because having a lot of soft power means others will be naturally inclined to do what you want and you won’t have to use your hard power very often. Nye believed America’s combination of hard and soft power gave it enormous advantages when dealing with the outside world, which is one of the reasons he was optimistic about America’s future and skeptical of those predicting its decline. Yet by the end of his long career, even he had begun to worry about what was happening to America’s global appeal.
Under Trump 2.0, the belief that hard power is all you need is abundantly apparent. The administration used the threat of tariffs to force trading partners into one-sided economic agreements, and it vows to continue the effort despite the Supreme Court decision that strikes them down. The administration has used military force in more than half a dozen countries and continues to kill alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, even when it doesn’t know who they are, cannot prove all of them are in fact engaged in narcotics trafficking, and admits that these actions will have little or no effect on the availability of illegal drugs. President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused other world leaders of being weak, told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he didn’t “have the cards” and should therefore cut a deal with Russia, and imposed a blockade on Cuba intended to further immiserate ordinary Cubans and eventually force its regime to surrender. Last but by no means least, it abandoned diplomacy and launched an unnecessary and unprovoked war against Iran, on the mistaken assumption that the Iranian regime would quickly collapse and yield a government more to our liking.
What is most striking about this fixation with hard power is how little effort is being made to disguise, legitimize, or justify its use. Most countries do nasty things on occasion, and great powers do so more than most, but they usually try to find ways to hide the mailed fist in a velvet glove of normative justification. Not so the Trump administration, which seems positively gleeful whenever it is able to violate some established norm and inflict some pain. When the president threatens to eradicate Iranian civilization, or when the secretary of defense dismisses international law and boasts that U.S. troops will show opponents “no quarter” (which would constitute a war crime), it is clear their goal is to intimidate rather than persuade, to compel rather than attract. Their motto, it seems, is: “Being the strongest means never having to say you’re sorry.”
This veneration of hard power has been accompanied by systematic efforts to undermine the institutions and policies that once made the United States more attractive to others. The U.S. Agency for International Development was abruptly dismantled by Elon Musk and the DOGE effort, endangering the lives of millions of people around the world and making the United States look arbitrary and indifferent. The administration tried to shut down the Voice of America broadcast network, an effort that was blocked in court and by a rare moment of congressional opposition. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has withdrawn the United States from more than 60 international organizations, allowed dozens of diplomatic posts to sit empty, and left the U.S. unrepresented at key international summit meetings. Violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and the killing of innocent protesters have exposed an ugly side of America to the rest of the world, and a sustained assault on higher education—previously one of the most visible symbols of American prestige and soft power—has made U.S. colleges and universities less attractive destinations for foreign students. Not only do these actions hit academia’s bottom line (which may be the point), it also means fewer foreign students will be educated in the United States, an experience that usually makes them even more “pro-America” than when they arrived. Put these things together, and you can understand why China’s image around the world is rising while America’s is falling.
I’m hardly the first person to notice the administration’s systemic assault on America’s soft-power advantage; what’s puzzling is why administration officials don’t recognize what’s happening. Do they not understand that overreliance on hard power—and treating the use of military force to hurt other countries not as a rare and regrettable necessity but as an act to be celebrated—is going to make other countries less willing to work with an erratic, vengeful, and potentially threatening America? Haven’t they ever heard the old adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”?
Here’s what I think is going on.
First, from the president on down, the administration’s weltanschauung divides the world into the strong (“winners”) and the weak (“losers”) and views any sort of compromise with weaker parties as a failure. Hence the tendency to preen and posture and adopt a take-no-prisoners attitude toward even the mildest criticism or opposition, not to mention the mindless attacks on staunchly pro-American countries such as Canada or Denmark. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s macho muscle-flexing about the “warrior ethos” and the joys of “lethality,” and White House advisor Stephen Miller’s declaration that the “iron laws” of history justified dominance by the strong, are perhaps the most obvious examples of this perspective, but they are hardly alone in believing that powerful actors can just tell others what to do and expect them to comply. Remember: They were appointed by a president who bragged that being a star made it OK to molest women. In this (im)moral universe, rules are for other people.
Second, although Trump and his followers claim to be intensely patriotic, they don’t seem to like the country they are trying to lead. Consider the MAGA slogan: If you believe it’s necessary to make America great again, you must not think it’s great today. For all their symbolic flag waving, it’s remarkable how few things Trump and his minions like or admire about this country. They don’t like most of the media; they despise most popular entertainers; they loathe Democrats (who are a larger share of the population than Republicans); they don’t like checks and balances or the rule of law; they are suspicious of citizens who weren’t born here (along with some who were); they have little respect for science and think universities are the enemy; and they remain convinced that a shadowy “deep state” still infects the military, the diplomatic corps, and a lot of government agencies. Trump doesn’t even like the White House and wants to remake it into a gaudy imperial monument. Because they believe America is in terrible shape, they may find it hard to imagine that the country’s enduring features might be attractive to others.
Third, Trump and his followers like quick fixes that they can portray as real achievements (e.g., the administration’s bogus peace agreements, interim trade deals, etc.) while eschewing patient, long-term efforts to win support overseas. Trump and company are more interested in cutting deals with other leaders than in nurturing positive ties between peoples, where the benefits accrue gradually and may not be fully realized until after they’ve left office. Who cares about winning over the next generation of foreign students when you will be out of office after 2028?
If this was your world view, then you would also discount the importance of soft power and lean on hard power instead. But Americans should know better. Some of the greatest successes in U.S. foreign-policy history came from working constructively and generously with others—including some former adversaries—and by working to correct some of the less savory aspects of our own society in order to burnish our global image. Examples include the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Civil Rights Movement, the measured promotion of trade liberalization, and the hard-nosed but ultimately peaceful negotiations that ended the Cold War and reunified Germany. By contrast, some of America’s biggest foreign-policy failures (e.g., Vietnam, the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ouster of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, or the current debacle in Iran) came from thinking that sufficient hard power would guarantee success.
The United States still has many appealing qualities, and foreign governments and citizens have been able to distinguish between America as a country and an ideal and the actions of its worst leaders. But if American political life continues to become coarser and more corrupt, and its hard power is repeatedly misused while its soft power atrophies, keeping those two things separate is going to be a lot more difficult.
