Shifting from 'hard' to 'soft' power<\/p>\n
Yenni Djahidin, The Jakarta Post\/Washington D.C.<\/p>\n
It had been raining unrelentingly since early morning.<\/p>\n
The sky was dark and people tried hard to avoid getting
\nsoaked. Outside the world's largest office building, the security
\nline was short.<\/p>\n
Inside, the line was 10 deep. One by one, those in the line
\npassed through a metal detector and moved to another line to get
\na visitor's badge. My escort explained that on a busy day, the
\nline could be much longer.<\/p>\n
The rain must have kept people away from the Pentagon that
\nday.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon is so big that it has its own shopping mall
\ninside the building. Employees can do their banking, shopping,
\neat a meal and even get groomed without ever leaving the
\npremises.<\/p>\n
Deep inside the five-sided building is the office of Paul D.
\nWolfowitz, the outgoing deputy secretary of defense. He will soon
\nbe moving to another huge organization just across the river in
\ndowntown Washington, DC: the World Bank.<\/p>\n
From running the institution primarily responsible for
\ndischarging U.S. \"hard\" power, 61-year-old Wolfowitz will soon be
\nrunning a global institution from which the United States, as its
\nlargest shareholder, discharges some of its \"soft\" power.<\/p>\n
From helping to fight global terrorism, Wolfowitz will soon be
\nin charge of fighting global poverty.<\/p>\n
His impending move to the international lending agency is not
\nas controversial as the role he has played in the four years or
\nso that he served not only as the number two person in the
\nPentagon, but more as one of the chief advisers to President
\nGeorge W. Bush in waging the war on terror in the wake of the
\n9\/11 attacks in 2001.<\/p>\n
Wolfowitz, rather than his boss, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is
\nregarded by many as the real architect of the U.S. campaign to
\nbring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, a theme that
\nPresident Bush now refers to far more frequently in justifying
\nthe March 2003 invasion of Iraq than Saddam Hussein's seemingly
\nnon-existent weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n
\"I am most proud of being part of a very impressive team of
\npeople,\" Wolfowitz said during our interview in his office.<\/p>\n
Paying tribute to his boss Rumsfeld, he said that during his
\ntime there had been a real transformation in the way that the
\nPentagon was run, chiefly in response to the challenges posed by
\nthe threat of terrorism. Still, he recognizes that, ultimately,
\n\"soft\" power is just as important as raw military power in such a
\ncampaign.<\/p>\n
\"My President has said over and over again that fighting
\nterrorism, which means promoting security for our country, among
\nother things, requires not just the military, but all the
\nelements of national power and influence.<\/p>\n
\"I think my children and grandchildren will live in a safer
\nworld if we can reduce poverty in Africa. So these things are,
\nultimately, very much connected to one another.\"<\/p>\n
That comes from a family man. Wolfowitz has three children by
\nhis wife Clare. The couple are divorced but remain close. Clare
\nWolfowitz, an anthropologist who specializes in Indonesia, says
\n\"we talk almost every day, and sometimes he comes to walk the
\ndog.\"<\/p>\n
In announcing Wolfowitz's nomination for the World Bank job,
\nPresident Bush referred to the time that Wolfowitz spent as
\nambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989 as invaluable
\nexperience in learning about the challenges facing developing
\ncountries.<\/p>\n
His time in Indonesia was also when he reached a conclusion on
\nthe compatibility between Islam (as practiced in Indonesia) and
\ndemocracy, a theme that he later used in pushing his ideas for
\nthe democratization of countries in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
In fact, Indonesia turned into a democracy nearly a decade
\nafter he left, but it was Ambassador Wolfowitz in his farewell
\nspeech in 1989 who called for greater political openness in
\nIndonesia, a speech that generated a rare and prolonged public
\ndebate about the need for Indonesia to democratize.<\/p>\n
But when asked about this, Wolfowitz quickly added that it was
\nnot just his knowledge of Indonesia that led him to believe that
\ndemocracy was possible in the Middle East, but also the time he
\nspent at the State Department in the 1980s, when he witnessed a
\ntransformation from autocracy to democracy in the Philippines and
\nSouth Korea.<\/p>\n
\"I just think that if anyone says that some particular
\nculture, nationality or religious group doesn't care about
\nfreedom or doesn't know what to do with it, my usual answer is to
\ninvite them to come to the United States and meet that particular
\ngroup in an environment where they are free, and where they can
\nbenefit from hard work and from taking care of their children.<\/p>\n
\"You see, it doesn't matter where they are from. Under the
\nright conditions (they can), and those conditions require the
\nfreedom to pursue your own creative instincts. These differences
\ndon't seem to apply, but bad government policy can do all kinds
\nof damage.\"<\/p>\n
There is no doubt, however, that the free and democratic
\nMiddle East that President Bush now talks of is a vision that
\nWolfowitz has entertained for some years now.<\/p>\n
There are some signs from the Middle East, notwithstanding the
\ndaily violence in parts of the region, that somehow his vision is
\nnow very much taking shape, no doubt with some U.S. prodding.<\/p>\n
He cited the election in Iraq, including the large turnout in
\nspite of threats and intimidation, the first-ever democratic
\nelection in Afghanistan last October, and the Palestinian
\nauthority election as examples of how people are seeking to make
\na difference to their own lives via the ballot box.<\/p>\n
The process does not stop there, either. There are, he noted,
\nstirrings of democracy in many other parts of the Middle East,
\nsuch as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states.<\/p>\n
\"People are debating whether one causes the other. I think
\nthere is a tendency for people to be inspired by the example of
\nothers.\"<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he admitted that \"there is still a long way to
\ngo.\"<\/p>\n
The soft-spoken and mild-mannered son of a Jewish immigrant
\nhas been portrayed in the press as, among other things, a
\nneoconservative, a war-hawk and as being naive. So how does he
\ndeal with the bad press he has been getting all this time?<\/p>\n
Wolfowitz says that he tries to respond in a positive way,
\nexplaining to his critics what he is trying to accomplish and
\nwhy.<\/p>\n
\"Sometimes, especially if it comes from a very credible
\nsource, if it's inaccurate, than you need to correct it.<\/p>\n
\"But you can't spend your whole life correcting inaccuracies
\nor you won't get anything done.\"<\/p>",
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