CAIRO: Amidst Israel’s war on Gaza, top Egyptian officials were busy with what they considered to be another more important war waged on their regime by a number of Arab satellite channels who were sharply critical of Egypt’s foreign policy. Hinting at the hollowness of their rhetoric compared to the real sacrifices the Egyptian army has made for the Palestinian cause, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit scornfully asked: “Do these satellite channels have infantry and armored battalions?
One cannot help but notice the striking similarity this question has with Stalin’s mocking question: “How many divisions does the Pope have?
What both politicians clearly share is a fatal underestimation of the influence of soft power in international relations.
On a very general level, power is the ability to produce the outcome one wants, and if necessary, to alter the conduct of other parties to make this happen. The ability to change the attitude of others can take place by the use of inducement (carrots) or by force (sticks), both of which are facets of ‘Hard Power.’
In other words, traditional forms of power – economic power and military power – fall into the category of hard command power. Nevertheless, there is an indirect way of exercising power, which is “soft power, a term articulated in the early 1990s by Joseph Nye, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
Nye explains: “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense, it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons. This aspect of power – getting others to want what you want – I call soft power. It co-opts people rather than coerces them.
Certainly, there is an intrinsic relationship between a country’s hard and soft power, for they tend to reinforce each other. A country whose military and economic power declines enormously would undeniably lose much of its soft power capabilities. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union is a case in point.
By the same token, an increase in a country’s hard power would most likely enhance its attraction to other nations/peoples. The influence and prestige of Saudi Arabia in the Arab and Islamic worlds were enhanced by the extraordinary accumulation of wealth generated by the oil boom of the 1970s.
However, soft power is not merely a mirror image of hard power calculations, Nye contends. The Vatican, for instance, has no armies or huge financial reserves, but still enjoys an exceptional spiritual influence over millions of believers.
By virtue of its political weight, cultural appeal and historical legacy, Egypt has the largest reservoir of soft power in the Arab world. It has, furthermore, been the hub of political and cultural activity in the Arab world for the past two decades.
But soft power is not merely an attribute of nature and history. Legitimacy, credibility and reputation are important sources of soft power. Otherwise, how can one explain the ultimate failure of the tripartite aggression on Egypt in the year 1956, despite the huge disparity between the overall hard power capabilities of the aggressors and that of the defender? By the same token, how can one explain the leverage a TV channel like Al-Jazeera currently has over Egypt, in spite of having no infantry or armored battalions as Aboul Gheit so shrewdly pointed out?
Around 50 years separate these two incidents, which represent the climax and anticlimax of Egypt’s soft power over the past five decades.
In the 1950s, soft power could be realized in the Arab world by pursuing an independent foreign policy that champions Arab causes, and a domestic policy that embarks on ambitious development plans and advocates social equality, i.e. everything that Egypt’s 1952 revolution symbolized.
In contemporary times, the malaises of despotism, corruption and economic mismanagement have permeated all Arab countries. In such a milieu, soft power could by realized by becoming an oasis of democracy, good governance, human rights, and economic prosperity, i.e. everything that Egypt lacks. Egypt’s image today is that of a police state that runs an overpopulated country, it is plagued with an ailing economy, crumbling public services, and rife with corruption and human rights abuses.
The war on Gaza revealed the extent to which the soft power of Egypt has eroded. That descent is bound to continue as long as senior officials continue to think like Stalin.
Nael M. Shama, PhD, is a political researcher and freelance writer based in Cairo.
