Secondly, all the powers have very clear problems. One big problem with soft power is that it is difficult to incorporate into government strategy due to its dependency on credibility, and also results often take a long time and the resources used in soft power are not under full government control (83). An example of why soft power may not be successful if implemented in government strategy is with the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons because North Korea cannot be stopped with soft power (84). Any country would need hard power if they were to dispute this issue, not soft power because the use of culture or values would not be able to deter the use of weaponry. Soft power in government is also a problem because governments rarely have
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Too much investment on high technology can lead to failure to invest in other necessities such as military training, military police and linguists (37). Linguists are needed as a way to communicate with people of countries where a power has military presence such as the United States in Afghanistan. Hard power used in cyber information can do damage to physical targets in another country destroying the soft power that cyber information can create to attract citizens to that country. An example of this is when malicious software is used by modern companies to shut down processes such as the Stuxnet worm virus inserted into Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that instructed Iranian nuclear facilities to shut down in 2010 …show more content…
However, the biggest problem of smart power is the threat it poses to the United States as powers such as China and India are effectively transitioning their power to smart power. India has a significant amount of hard power within military resources and soft power with an established democracy and influential popular culture through Bollywood. While India doesn’t have the power resources to be a challenger to the United States on its own, a coalition between India and China could overpower the United States (174). Similarly, China has a major advantage in hard power because it has the largest army and the largest military budget but China also has a major advantage in soft power because it has the highest rate of economic growth and the most Internet users of all the countries (177). China is the most likely contender from all the superpowers to balance or even surpass American power (178). However, China lacks the cultural industries that the United States and India have in Hollywood and Bollywood respectively. China also doesn’t have universities equal to America’s and it lacks the NGO’s that generate a lot of America’s soft power all over the world. Despite being behind the United States in soft and hard power resources, in addition to hard power, China is also increasing its soft power resources by creating hundreds of Confucius Institutes around the world to spread its language and culture
Too much investment on high technology can lead to failure to invest in other necessities such as military training, military police and linguists (37). Linguists are needed as a way to communicate with people of countries where a power has military presence such as the United States in Afghanistan. Hard power used in cyber information can do damage to physical targets in another country destroying the soft power that cyber information can create to attract citizens to that country. An example of this is when malicious software is used by modern companies to shut down processes such as the Stuxnet worm virus inserted into Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that instructed Iranian nuclear facilities to shut down in 2010 …show more content…
However, the biggest problem of smart power is the threat it poses to the United States as powers such as China and India are effectively transitioning their power to smart power. India has a significant amount of hard power within military resources and soft power with an established democracy and influential popular culture through Bollywood. While India doesn’t have the power resources to be a challenger to the United States on its own, a coalition between India and China could overpower the United States (174). Similarly, China has a major advantage in hard power because it has the largest army and the largest military budget but China also has a major advantage in soft power because it has the highest rate of economic growth and the most Internet users of all the countries (177). China is the most likely contender from all the superpowers to balance or even surpass American power (178). However, China lacks the cultural industries that the United States and India have in Hollywood and Bollywood respectively. China also doesn’t have universities equal to America’s and it lacks the NGO’s that generate a lot of America’s soft power all over the world. Despite being behind the United States in soft and hard power resources, in addition to hard power, China is also increasing its soft power resources by creating hundreds of Confucius Institutes around the world to spread its language and culture