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Advantages
- The excessive use of hard power can in turn, deteriorate a certain state's soft power. The US is infamous for never being hesitant to use make use of her abundant hard power, as was evident in the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The invasions were successful in toppling the regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, but they paved the way for violence and chaos which resulted in more extremism, and greater anti American and anti western sentiment in those countries respectively.
- The development of hard power is much easier for large, rich states such as the US or Russia. They both have very large GDP's and strong economies which means that they are able to put more money toward maintaining a strong and powerful military. However, smaller states are able to gain soft power without necessarily needing vast economic or military resources, as was the case with Japan from the 1980s to the present. Japan has more soft power resources than any other Asian country, and in 2004 according to Joseph Nye's book on Soft Power, Japan ranked first in the world for number of patents, first for life expectancy, second in book and music sales, second in high-tech exports and third in expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP. It is evident therefore that it is much easier for states to gain soft power in the modern world than hard power, which might mean that more states wield different degrees of soft power, thus making it more significant in global politics.
- Soft power strategies are not always successful and can sometimes lead to the perception of a soft power strategy as modern imperialism. An example of this might be the USAFRICOM (United States Africa Command). AFRICOM is a military organisation that is responsible for the US's military relations with 53 African nations. It was originally sold as a soft power strategy but resulted in the US being perceived as having imperialist intentions in Africa. This combined with the 2003 Iraq invasion has seriously damaged the USA's soft power. It is therefore evident that a nation's soft power strategies are considerably important in global politics and are possible more significant than hard power.
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Disadvantages
- It is still evident that the states we consider to be the most powerful in the world possess both hard and soft power and are able to use each to their benefit, which is sometimes known as smart power. The USA as we know has the largest, most advanced military by far, and a larger annual military budget than the next six states combined. American soft power is also hugely important, as American culture and companies such as Apple, Nike, Microsoft and Coca Cola are almost universally relevant. One could argue that despite all the soft power that America possesses, they would not be able to hold their position on the global stage as hegemon without their huge military and hard power resources.
- Time is also an important factor in determining the importance of soft power. It could be argued that soft power is less significant in the short term particularly, as it requires a state to gain intangible influence. While hard power is easy to obtain given the economic resources as it involves a state developing and gaining tangible items such as weapons, tanks, planes, bombs etc., soft power is much more difficult to obtain as it takes often decades of building socio-economic and political ties with other nations, which is exactly what the US has done since the end of the Second World War. Therefore even if nations such as China and Brazil are building up their soft power, it might not be significant at this point.
- Some neo-realists argue that soft power is insignificant as states only respond to two incentives in global politics, and these are economic incentives and force. An example of this might be the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. It could be argued here that the US was using soft power to make a deal with Iran to limit their nuclear programme and reduce by 98% their stockpiles of Uranium, by scaling back their hard power measures in the form of crippling economic sanctions.
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