The U.S. President Trump's administration is not very interested in public diplomacy.However, public diplomacy is the efforts to communicate with the people of other countries directly to communicate with the people of the other country. It is also one of the key tools for policy makers to create soft power.It's even more important.

Public opinion surveys and Portland Public Relations Company's Soft Power 30 Index shows that Trump has been declining since Trump took office.Tweet can help set the global agenda, but if they are not attractive to others, they will not be soft power.

Trump's supporters responded that soft power is the idea of others, which is irrelevant; the key is to have the hard power of military and economic means.In March 2017, Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney announced a hard power budget that reduced the funds of the State Department and the US International Development Agency by nearly 30%.

Fortunately, the military leaders have a deeper understanding in this regard.In 2013, General Martis (later became Trump's first Minister of Defense) warned Congress: If you do not provide sufficient funds to the State Council, then I must eventually buy more ammunition.Kissinger once pointed out that international order depends not only on the balance of hard power, but also on people's views on legitimacy, and this depends to a large extent on soft power.

The information revolution will always have a profound impact on socio -economic and politics. The great influence of the Gutenberg printing machine on Europe in the 15th century is evidence.People can trace the current information revolution back to the 1960s, as well as the emergence of Moore's law (that is, the number of transistors on computer chips about about every two years).As a result, the computing power of computers has increased significantly. By the beginning of this century, the cost of computing power was only 0.1%in the early 1970s.

In 1993, there were about 50 websites around the world; by 2000, this number had exceeded 5 million.Today, more than 4 billion people will access the Internet; by 2020, this number is expected to increase to 5 billion to 6 billion people, and the Internet of Things will connect tens of billions of equipment.The number of users of Facebook exceeds the total population of China and the United States.

In such a world, the power of attractive and persuasion has become more and more important.However, public diplomacy has long passed through broadcasting and television.The advancement of scientific and technological progress has greatly reduced the cost of processing and transmitting information.As a result, the explosion of information has produced a rich contradiction (Paradox of Pinder) mdash; mdash; the richness of information causes lack of attention.

When people face a lot of information, it is difficult to know what to pay attention to.The purpose of social media algorithms is to compete for attention.Power becomes more important than in the past, and a political struggle closely connected to society and ideology is often concentrated in the establishment and destruction of reputation.Social media can make false information from friends look more credible.As the special US prosecutor Mueller's report on Russia's intervention in the 2016 presidential election shows, it allows Russia to weapon the American social media.

Power has always been important in world politics, but credibility has become a more important power resource.Information with significant publicity may not only be contemporary, but also may produce counter -effects: it harms the reputation of a country in terms of credibility, thereby weakening its soft power.The most effective publicity is not publicity, but a two -way dialogue between people.

Russia and China do not seem to understand this, and sometimes the United States is failed.For example, during the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib prison treat prisoners in a way that does not meet American values, making people think that the United States is hypocritical, and this view cannot be played by Muslims in the United States.The image is twisted.Today, it is proven to be the false presidential tweet that weakens the reputation of the United States and weakens the soft power of the United States.The standard for measuring the effectiveness of public diplomacy is how many people have changed (such as interviews or polls), not how much money you spend or how much information you send.

If domestic or foreign policies appear hypocritical, arrogant, ignored, or based on narrow national interests, they will weaken soft power.For example, the polls conducted after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed that the attractiveness of the United States declined sharply.In the 1970s, many people around the world opposed the war of the United States in Vietnam, and the global status of the United States reflected how uncomfortable this policy was.

Suspieces believe that such a cycle shows that soft power is not important; cooperation between countries is due to their own interests.However, this argument ignores a key point: cooperation is a question of degree, and the degree is affected by the mutual attraction or rejection of both parties.

Fortunately, the soft power of a country depends not only on its official policy, but also the attractiveness of its civil society.When the overseas protesters are opposed to the Vietnam War, they often sing the American Civil Rights Movement. We will eventually win.From the perspective of history, we have all reason to believe that the United States will restore its soft power after Trump, although it will definitely help investment in public diplomacy.

Author Joseph S. NYE Is it a professor at Harvard University. Is it important to publish a new work?Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump from Roosevelt to Trump?

English Title: American Soft Power in the Age of Trump

Copyright: Project Syndicate 2019