UNITED STATES: Abuse of prisoners is landmark setback

Analysis

The exposure of the abuse of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison is highly damaging for the Bush administration. This is particularly the case in the light of the failure (to date) to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the subsequent decision to justify the Iraq conflict largely in terms of 'spreading freedom'. Indeed, the abuse revelations came shortly after a speech by President George Bush on April 30 in which he declared that "we achieved...the removal of Saddam Hussein. As a result, there are no longer torture chambers...or rape rooms in Iraq".

The revelations are also undermining the moral authority (and thus the political capital) of the United States. Moral authority is a precious commodity in international politics which comprises favourable estimates of and, crucially, root assumptions about, international actors (including states). Analogies have inevitably been drawn with Vietnam: the picture of the hooded detainee connected to electrical wires risks becoming the symbolic image of the occupation in much the same way that the photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a US attack helped turned sentiment against Washington's campaign in Southeast Asia a generation ago.

Soft power erosion. The scandal is particularly serious for the United States because it is eroding the country's formidable 'soft power.' This concept, coined by Joseph Nye and outlined most comprehensively in his recent book 'Soft Power', refers to the ability of a state (or indeed any actor) to achieve its goals through attraction rather than coercion (hard power) or payment (economic power).

Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others and arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture (in places where it is admired by others); political values and ideals (when it lives up to them); and foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority). Thus, the longstanding US canons of openness, civil liberties, and democracy have traditionally held strong world-wide appeal. By the same token, when US officials are seen to violate these canons, soft power assets are damaged.

Specific setbacks. The Abu Ghraib revelations are undercutting US soft power in at least three key respects:

1. Human rights. During the Cold War, Washington's public diplomacy was reinforced by US association with international conventions that fostered human rights. Most notably, the 1975 multilateral Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe helped legitimise discussion of human rights in the then-Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. As such, it was enormously successful in leveraging US and Western power, providing a key platform from which Washington has, in general, skilfully deployed human rights issues to its advantage during the past 30 years. The prisoner abuse scandal means that, at least in the short term, the United States has lost these arguments.
2. Symbolic power. The revelations are eroding the symbolic power of the United States as a polity founded upon law. This asset has already been undercut by the administration's persistent preference for unilateralism over international convention (notably in regard to the decision not to grant the Guantanamo Bay captives -- and detainees in other theatres in the 'war on terror' -- 'prisoner of war' status).
3. 'Framing' issues. Washington's ability to frame political arguments in ways that serve US interests has also been badly damaged. Indeed, in relation to the Iraq campaign, this asset may be irrecoverable. What was first promoted as a campaign to liberate the country and, ultimately, democratise the wider region has become a de facto exercise in pacifying Iraq on terms that would have been unacceptable to the administration only a few months ago (see UNITED STATES: Defiant Bush lowers Iraq expectations - April 14, 2004).

Anti-terror challenge. Critics sometimes depict US soft power as little more than the influence of brands such as Coca Cola, Hollywood, blue jeans and the global stature of the US dollar. However, this trivialises the concept and fails to capture the key role it has played as a means of obtaining outcomes that policymakers have sought. For example, Washington used soft power resources after World War Two to draw other countries into a system of alliances and institutions that has proved to be remarkably resilient. The Cold War was subsequently won by a strategy of containment and cultural vigour that combined soft and hard power.

The Bush administration has largely prosecuted its 'war on terror' through the application of hard power. However, in common with the Cold War, the challenges posed by the 'war on terror' cannot be met by hard assets alone:

• The campaign against Islamic terrorism is not a 'clash of civilisations', but a contest whose outcome is closely tied to a battle between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilisation. The United States will win only if it demonstrates a capacity to win moderate Muslim support.
• Washington will not achieve sustained success in the anti-terror campaign without considerable international cooperation. While countries will often assist out of self interest, the degree to which they do so will depend critically on the attractiveness of the United States to them.

Information age. More broadly, the importance and utility of soft power are only likely to grow in a world that is being transformed by the information revolution and economic globalisation. To date, these forces have enhanced US power. While the relative technological pre-eminence of the United States over other countries will diminish over time, it will remain well placed on the soft power front by virtue of the fact that:

• its dominant culture and ideas are very close to prevailing global norms;
• its credibility is generally enhanced by its domestic and international values and policies and;
• its multiple channels of communication will continue to help to frame issues.

Projecting soft power. At the same time, the information revolution and economic globalisation have transformed the conditions for projecting soft power:

1. Perceptions in democracies. Now that more than half of nation states are democracies, the Cold War model of a competition between two opposing political and social systems is less relevant. There is still a need to provide accurate information to some countries, not least in the Middle East, where governments control information. However, there is also an enhanced requirement to create favourable perceptions of the United States among key US democratic allies, such as Mexico, where governments influence information flows rather than control them.

   Latin American populations have long envied the United States but also (partly because of US policy towards the region over the course of two centuries) distrusted it. Recent events in Iraq have added to the distrust. Indeed, the manner in which the administration went to war provoked considerable regional disquiet, diminished US soft power and created a disabling rather than enabling environment for its policies. This partly explains the rationale for Mexico's reluctance to support a proposed second UN resolution on Iraq in spring 2003.

2. Source credibility. At the same time that technological advances have led to vast increases in information, publics have become more wary of, and sensitive to, propaganda; credibility has thus become even more critical. Indeed, in many respects, politics has become a contest of 'competitive credibility' in which governments must compete not only with foreign counterparts, but also with a broad range of alternatives including media such as Al-Jazeera and non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International.

   Information that appears to be propaganda may not only be dismissed, but can also prove counter-productive if it undermines a country's reputation for credibility. This is the case with the pre-war political exaggeration of intelligence (and related intelligence services failures) relating to Iraq, which has damaged US credibility.