US defense chief urges greater use of 'soft power'

AFP
Tuesday November 27, 2007

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Monday for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian efforts to project US "soft power" globally through diplomacy, foreign aid and public relations.

"We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen," Gates said in a speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

Gates said greater civilian participation was needed for the success of military operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan but also to head off problems before they turn into conflicts.

He said the 36 billion dollars a year the United States budgets for foreign policy programs is "disproportionately small" when compared to a military budget that is now close to a trillion dollars a year.

"What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on civilian instruments of national security -- diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development," he said.

Noting the irony of a defense secretary advocating spending on diplomacy, Gates said "I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use 'soft power' and for better integrating it with 'hard power.'"

He was particularly scathing about Washington's failure at "communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture."

Full article here.