Balancing Hard and Soft Power

There is no balance, Khanna says.

Parag Khanna: It is really simple; there is no balance between hard and soft power. There is hard power and soft power and other kinds of power that mix together in all kinds of ways.
There's a lot of people who have looked at the idea of soft power to them, really cast it aside, and said it was really a silly idea, because it only worked when our hard power was also working. And so when we were demonstrate our strength, and then people felt obliged to accept our sort of value. But that isn't the case of having soft power. Paper is over; the failures of hard power that doesn't work.
There is lot of dismissing the concept today, or they are replacing as Joan and I; with a notion of smart power, which is really just another way of saying the same thing.
Rather than use all of these monikers and labels, I prefer to just think of power as a whole menu or source of things that you blend together and overlap in that you choose some and not others, or you choose a variety of things to get your objectives done. But I I don't believe that there is a fixed ratio between them.
 
Recorded on: 3/3/2008

Parag Khanna: It is really simple; there is no balance between hard and soft power. There is hard power and soft power and other kinds of power that mix together in all kinds of ways.
There's a lot of people who have looked at the idea of soft power to them, really cast it aside, and said it was really a silly idea, because it only worked when our hard power was also working. And so when we were demonstrate our strength, and then people felt obliged to accept our sort of value. But that isn't the case of having soft power. Paper is over; the failures of hard power that doesn't work.
There is lot of dismissing the concept today, or they are replacing as Joan and I; with a notion of smart power, which is really just another way of saying the same thing.
Rather than use all of these monikers and labels, I prefer to just think of power as a whole menu or source of things that you blend together and overlap in that you choose some and not others, or you choose a variety of things to get your objectives done. But I I don't believe that there is a fixed ratio between them.
 
Recorded on: 3/3/2008