I read, with interest, Mr Adelman's critique of soft power and found myself agreeing with many of his insights. I found the last paragraph off putting, however, as an apologia for hard power, namely military spending. I would have found the article less disingenuous if it included a balance of the ledger on outcomes where we have supplied military assistance or direct intervention. Places like Iraq and Afghanistan are still an open question and our intervention in South Vietnam was no more successful than our foreign aid, though sadly much costlier in terms of lives. Lastly, I wonder if Mr Adelman considered the greatest combination of hard and soft power, namely the Marshall Plan whereby we rebuilt allies (and a market) while projecting power suitable to prevent invasion/loss of influence.

He is Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman, the man who said the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be a CAKEWALK.

One would think that after a mistake such as the Iraq war, one would be hesitant to write op-ed columns out of pure shame.

A lot of it has to do with how the foreign aid is delivered. If the money goes to corrupted officials and US contractors to do the "development" jobs, surely what's the point to go on.

As for those exchange-student-turned-terrorists, I am curious to know what they experienced in their years in US...

In the end, Ken Adelman is a POLITICIAN, nothing more.

It is highly doubtful that he would have been advising Congress to cut foreign aid if Republicans were holding all reigns of power in Washington.

Republicans have showered more U. S. AID on world’s despots that Ken Adelman talks about, than Democrats.

U.S. foreign aid is such a small part of the budget as a whole, that I don't really understand why we would cut any of it. We should cut other things that have literally BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars that need cutting every year. What about the military? What about our social programs? I mean, lets cut congresses salaries before we cut our foreign aid. All in all I think it's stupid to assume we should just 'cut' foreign aid. Lets first try something intelligent like auditing the process and cleaning up the who, what, and why of our Foreign Aid pipeline.

The interesting thing about "Foreign Aid" is that it's almost entirely not what most people think it is.

If you ask people what they think "foreign aid" money is spent on, most people think that its hand outs of food and clothes and medicine to places like Africa and South America. They assume that its mostly about helping the poor in poor countries.

Indeed conservatives overwhelmingly oppose foreign aid because they think it works this way and "liberals" largely support foreign aid because they think it works this way, and both are totally wrong. If they understood how foreign aid really worked most conservatives would support it and most liberals would oppose it.

First of all, OVER HALF of all American foreign aid goes to protecting Israel. Over half! Most of of that goes directly to Israel, but the rest goes to neighboring nations in attempts to basically bribe them to leave Israel alone.

In addition, the vast majority of foreign aid goes to buying weapons or other forms of military support. People think this money is buying food for poor Haitians, but it's really mostly buying jet fighters for Israel and Pakistan.

The truth is that "foreign aid" as a concept could work, but the way that foreign aid has actually been used by the United States is a total failure and actually largely works against the very principles that it is ostensibly designed to promote. And, though it is small, the fact is that the foreign aid budget should be a part of the military budget, because in fact, it is actually just another form of military spending.

Mr. Adelman should read Nye's book--it provides a much more sophisticated notion of soft power than the caricature used in this essay. The notion that we should expect it to buy diplomatic subservience is simply silly.

I think one has to put Prof. Nye's advice about foreign aid in the context of his rejection of the growing perception that the US is in decline. In a Charlie Rose interview, he intimate that the decline of the American empire is nonsense.

My second point: if the Republicans look for results (rather than intentions) of US foreign aid, why is Israel still getting $3bn in foreign aid? Or do the Republicans view the steady decline of Israeli-Palestinian relations as "progress"?

I agree with this essay. "Feeling" in politics are almost always a *product* of a political relationship, and almost never a cause. (I say "almost" because I won't categorically rule out the possibility of the opposite being true, but I don't really see how it could occur.) That is, the feelings of hate, love, etc, that populations have for foreign powers are produced by the prospective actions that the foreign power might do for, or to, the population in question. Such feelings are almost always about the future, and almost never about the past. For instance, I'm sure if you'd taken a survey in Benghazi about their feelings toward the US at the beginning of our invention there, the US would have registered a very high approval rating, because it looked as if we were about to help them out decisively. If you took it again today, I'm certain the US's approval rating has fallen, as the intervention has proven less efficacious than hoped. In both cases the positive or negative feelings they have toward us were *caused by* the political relationship and the expectation that they stood to profit from our actions. As long as they believed that, they liked us; when it became clear our invention was limited, they didn't like us so much. It is the calculation of gain or loss that produces the feelings of like or dislike; not the feelings that produce the calculation. To take another example, pro-Russian feelings in France before WW1 (e.g., the fad for Russian ballet) were *caused by* the expectation that Russia would be a powerful ally against Germany; the alliance, and the circumstances that made the alliance a necessity, produced the feelings, not the feelings the alliance and the circumstances.

The point is, we shouldn't spend too much effort trying to changes anybody's feelings. National populations which believe we threaten their interests will continue to hate us, regardless of our much aid we supply, while those which believe they will profit from us will like us, no matter of how little, but in neither case do the feelings *cause* anything; rather, they are *products* of a relationship which exists for other reasons.

Another case of biting the hand that feeds you, or is it the US trying to buy its way into the favor of countries.

Surely Israel could benefit in being 'nice' to America, especially if it receives a lot of money.

Well each to its own, I suppose America has its reasons.

Good Luck

Morpheyous

Careful with putting too much reliance on your data analysis, in the 80's models
that were cited.

Past performance is not sufficient to predict accurately future outcomes. Data itself is not sufficient to form the reasons an event occurs.

Avoiding developmental activities misses the emotional connection made in a population. Some form of developmental help is necessary.

As per the exchange programs - I think the idea of an exchange program is highly valuable, though many different forms exist. I have to admit I am not expert about them. But heck, I had traveled at an exchange program. I guess I turned out okay?

Did you ever tabulate the results of eight years of Bush stupidity? Results? What results? Where results? Did I miss something, or wasn't it an absolute cockup at everything it touched?

Liberals focus of defuzing crises at minimum expense on all sides, while conservatives focus on killing off as many people belonging to the flavor-of-the-decade they don't like, with maximum financial return for themselves.

There is something sick about people who associate mass murder with sexual potency, and peace-keeping with impotence; don't you think?

What a shame that we are talking about Soft-Hard wars .I never understood why we go to overseas for war ? Are they disturbing US ? I do not think so but still we are running everywhere for fighting. What if goverment will decide to share that money with citizens ? I bet it will be better but nah. not a chance if they will stay out of wars they will not feel good. Believe me 2 years ago i was being angry when i see people just read about Celebrity news . But now i am not because i can understand that they do not want to read about wars, violations or another BS. Still I hope our guys will not go to war again.

Hello,

This is a sorely wanting analysis by Adelman. See my reply in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-lieberman/power-failure-adelmans-at_b_855042.html

Mike Lieberman

Frankly the aim of the article is that smart power is exactly as it sounds like, it should be applied to places where it can make a real tangible difference to further US foreign policy goals. And not simply be handed out to whoever asks for it where it disappears into a black hole of corruption and lack of accountability. weber grills on salePast performance is not sufficient to predict accurately future outcomes. Data itself is not sufficient to form the reasons an event occurs.Avoiding developmental activities misses the emotional connection made in a population. Some form of developmental help is necessary.

there were no Nazi insurgents running around planting IEDs and incurring civilian losses destroying good will. Europe after World War 2 was also surrounded by countries who were supportive of the Marshall plan's goals and US efforts, unlike today in Afghanistan and Iraq where neighboring countries actively attempt to underminewww.moneymakingsecretsrevealed4u.com
US efforts or harbor those that do (granted there was the Soviet Union, but their efforts never really exceeded supporting local communist party activities and certainly never escalated to the levels we see in Iraq and Afghanistan, besides they were busy trying to rebuild their own nation).