Shifting from 'hard' to 'soft' power

Shifting from 'hard' to 'soft' power

Yenni Djahidin, The Jakarta Post/Washington D.C.

It had been raining unrelentingly since early morning.

The sky was dark and people tried hard to avoid getting
soaked. Outside the world's largest office building, the security
line was short.

Inside, the line was 10 deep. One by one, those in the line
passed through a metal detector and moved to another line to get
a visitor's badge. My escort explained that on a busy day, the
line could be much longer.

The rain must have kept people away from the Pentagon that
day.

The Pentagon is so big that it has its own shopping mall
inside the building. Employees can do their banking, shopping,
eat a meal and even get groomed without ever leaving the
premises.

Deep inside the five-sided building is the office of Paul D.
Wolfowitz, the outgoing deputy secretary of defense. He will soon
be moving to another huge organization just across the river in
downtown Washington, DC: the World Bank.

From running the institution primarily responsible for
discharging U.S. "hard" power, 61-year-old Wolfowitz will soon be
running a global institution from which the United States, as its
largest shareholder, discharges some of its "soft" power.

From helping to fight global terrorism, Wolfowitz will soon be
in charge of fighting global poverty.

His impending move to the international lending agency is not
as controversial as the role he has played in the four years or
so that he served not only as the number two person in the
Pentagon, but more as one of the chief advisers to President
George W. Bush in waging the war on terror in the wake of the
9/11 attacks in 2001.

Wolfowitz, rather than his boss, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is
regarded by many as the real architect of the U.S. campaign to
bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, a theme that
President Bush now refers to far more frequently in justifying
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq than Saddam Hussein's seemingly
non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

"I am most proud of being part of a very impressive team of
people," Wolfowitz said during our interview in his office.

Paying tribute to his boss Rumsfeld, he said that during his
time there had been a real transformation in the way that the
Pentagon was run, chiefly in response to the challenges posed by
the threat of terrorism. Still, he recognizes that, ultimately,
"soft" power is just as important as raw military power in such a
campaign.

"My President has said over and over again that fighting
terrorism, which means promoting security for our country, among
other things, requires not just the military, but all the
elements of national power and influence.

"I think my children and grandchildren will live in a safer
world if we can reduce poverty in Africa. So these things are,
ultimately, very much connected to one another."

That comes from a family man. Wolfowitz has three children by
his wife Clare. The couple are divorced but remain close. Clare
Wolfowitz, an anthropologist who specializes in Indonesia, says
"we talk almost every day, and sometimes he comes to walk the
dog."

In announcing Wolfowitz's nomination for the World Bank job,
President Bush referred to the time that Wolfowitz spent as
ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989 as invaluable
experience in learning about the challenges facing developing
countries.

His time in Indonesia was also when he reached a conclusion on
the compatibility between Islam (as practiced in Indonesia) and
democracy, a theme that he later used in pushing his ideas for
the democratization of countries in the Middle East.

In fact, Indonesia turned into a democracy nearly a decade
after he left, but it was Ambassador Wolfowitz in his farewell
speech in 1989 who called for greater political openness in
Indonesia, a speech that generated a rare and prolonged public
debate about the need for Indonesia to democratize.

But when asked about this, Wolfowitz quickly added that it was
not just his knowledge of Indonesia that led him to believe that
democracy was possible in the Middle East, but also the time he
spent at the State Department in the 1980s, when he witnessed a
transformation from autocracy to democracy in the Philippines and
South Korea.

"I just think that if anyone says that some particular
culture, nationality or religious group doesn't care about
freedom or doesn't know what to do with it, my usual answer is to
invite them to come to the United States and meet that particular
group in an environment where they are free, and where they can
benefit from hard work and from taking care of their children.

"You see, it doesn't matter where they are from. Under the
right conditions (they can), and those conditions require the
freedom to pursue your own creative instincts. These differences
don't seem to apply, but bad government policy can do all kinds
of damage."

There is no doubt, however, that the free and democratic
Middle East that President Bush now talks of is a vision that
Wolfowitz has entertained for some years now.

There are some signs from the Middle East, notwithstanding the
daily violence in parts of the region, that somehow his vision is
now very much taking shape, no doubt with some U.S. prodding.

He cited the election in Iraq, including the large turnout in
spite of threats and intimidation, the first-ever democratic
election in Afghanistan last October, and the Palestinian
authority election as examples of how people are seeking to make
a difference to their own lives via the ballot box.

The process does not stop there, either. There are, he noted,
stirrings of democracy in many other parts of the Middle East,
such as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states.

"People are debating whether one causes the other. I think
there is a tendency for people to be inspired by the example of
others."

Nevertheless, he admitted that "there is still a long way to
go."

The soft-spoken and mild-mannered son of a Jewish immigrant
has been portrayed in the press as, among other things, a
neoconservative, a war-hawk and as being naive. So how does he
deal with the bad press he has been getting all this time?

Wolfowitz says that he tries to respond in a positive way,
explaining to his critics what he is trying to accomplish and
why.

"Sometimes, especially if it comes from a very credible
source, if it's inaccurate, than you need to correct it.

"But you can't spend your whole life correcting inaccuracies
or you won't get anything done."