At the same time, states operate in an era of competition with others, seeking to promote their security by leveraging their assets. And this is where “soft power” comes in. “The soft power of a country,” Nye explained, “rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority).”
*
As an Indian, I am a little concerned about those who speak of our country as a future “world leader” or even as “the next superpower.” Many Indian thinkers and writers I respect have spoken of India's geostrategic advantages, its economic dynamism, political stability, proven military capabilities, its nuclear, space, and missile programs, the entrepreneurial energy of our people, and the country's growing pool of young and skilled manpower as assuring India “great power” status as a “world leader” in the new century.
The notion of “world leadership” is a curiously archaic one; the very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. What makes a country a world leader? Is it population, in which case India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world's most populous country by 2050? Is it military strength (India's is already the world's fourth-largest army) or nuclear capacity (India's status having been made clear, if not formally recognized, in 1998)? Is it economic development? There, India has made extraordinary strides in recent years; it is already the world's fifth-largest economy in PPP (purchasing-power parity) terms and continues to climb, though too many of its people still live in destitution, amid despair and disrepair. Or could it be a combination of all these, allied to something altogether more difficult to define — the power of example?
In answering this question, India must determine where its strengths lie as it seeks to make the twenty-first century its own. Much of the conventional analyses of India's stature in the world relies on the all-too-familiar indices of GDP, impressive economic growth rates (7 percent a year over the last five years, and talk of even 10 percent in the next five), and our undoubted military power. But if there is one attribute of independent India to which increasing attention is now being paid around the globe, it is the quality that we would do well to cherish and develop in today's world: our soft power.
The notion of “soft power” is relatively new in international discourse. The term was coined by Nye to describe the extraordinary strengths of the United States that went well beyond American military dominance. Traditionally, Nye explains, power in world politics was seen in terms of military power: the side with the larger army was likely to win. But even in the past, this wasn't enough; after all, the United States lost the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan. Enter soft power.
For Nye, the United States is the archetypal exponent of soft power. The United States is the home of Boeing and Intel, GM and the iPod, Microsoft and MTV, Hollywood and Disneyland, McDonald's and Starbucks — in short, home of most of the major products that dominate daily life around our globe. The attractiveness of these assets, and of the American lifestyle of which they are emblematic, is that they permit the United States to maximize what Nye called its soft power — the ability to attract and persuade others to adopt the U.S. agenda, rather than relying purely on the dissuasive or coercive hard power of military force. Its subtly deployed soft power is therefore as important to the United States as — perhaps more so — than its well-established hard power.
In his book The Paradox of American Power Nye took the analysis of soft power beyond the United States; other nations, too, he suggested, could acquire it. In today's information era, he wrote, three types of countries are likely to gain soft power and so succeed: “those whose dominant cultures and ideals are closer to prevailing global norms (which now emphasize liberalism, pluralism, autonomy); those with the most access to multiple channels of communication and thus more influence over how issues are framed; and those whose credibility is enhanced by their domestic and international performance.”
At first glance this seems to be a prescription for reaffirming today's reality of U.S. dominance, since it is clear that no country scores more highly on all three categories than the United States. But Nye himself admits this is not so: soft power has been pursued with success by other countries over the years. When France lost the war of 1870 to Prussia, one of its most important steps to rebuild the nation's shattered morale and enhance its prestige was to create the Alliance Française to promote French language and literature throughout the world. French culture has remained a major selling point for French diplomacy ever since. The U.K. has the British Council, the Swiss have Pro Helvetia, and Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal have, respectively, institutes named for Goethe, Cervantes, Dante Alighieri, and Camoës. Today, China has started establishing “Confucius institutes” to promote Chinese culture internationally. But soft power does not rely merely on governmental action: Hollywood and MTV have done more to promote the idea of America as a desirable and admirable society than the Voice of America or the Fulbright scholarships. “Soft power,” Nye says, “is created partly by governments and partly in spite of them.”
What does this mean for India? It means giving attention, encouragement, and active support to the aspects and products of our society that the world would find attractive — not in order to directly persuade others to support India, but rather to enhance our country's intangible standing in their eyes. Bollywood is already doing this by bringing its brand of glitzy entertainment not just to the Indian diaspora in the U.S. or U.K. but to the screens of Syrians and Senegalese — who may not understand the Hindi dialogue but catch the spirit of the films, and look at India with stars in their eyes as a result. (An Indian diplomat friend in Damascus a few years ago told me that the only publicly displayed portraits that were as big as those of then president Hafez al-Assad were those of Amitabh Bachchan.) Indian art, classical music, and dance have the same effect. So does the work of Indian fashion designers, which not long ago dominated the show windows of New York's chic Lord and Taylor department store. Indian cuisine, spreading around the world, raises our culture higher in people's reckoning; the way to foreigners’ hearts is through their palates.
When India's cricket team triumphs or its tennis players claim grand slams; when a bhangra beat is infused into a Western pop record or an Indian choreographer invents a fusion of kathak and ballet; when Indian women sweep the Miss World and Miss Universe contests, or when Monsoon Wedding wows the critics and Lagaan claims an Oscar nomination; when Indian writers win the Booker or Pulitzer Prizes; when each of these things happens, our country's soft power is enhanced. (Ask yourself how many Chinese novelists the typical literate American reader can name. Indeed, how many non-Western countries can claim a presence in the Occidental mind comparable to India's?) And when Americans speak of the IITs with the same reverence they used to accord to MIT or Caltech, and the Indianness of engineers and software developers is taken as synonymous with mathematical and scientific excellence, it is India that gains in respect.
In the information age, Joseph Nye has argued, it is often the side that has the better story that wins. India must remain the “land of the better story.” As a society with a free press and a thriving mass media, with a people whose creative energies are daily encouraged to express themselves in a variety of appealing ways, India has an extraordinary ability to tell stories that are more persuasive and attractive than those of its rivals. This is not about propaganda; indeed, it will not work if it is directed from above, least of all by government. But its impact, though intangible, can be huge.