Counter-terrorism, smart power and the United States

Eadie, Pauline

Abstract

This article examines smart power, specifically in relation to US counter-terrorism initiatives, focusing on US foreign aid as a soft power instrument. Economic aid and military aid are disbursed under the auspices of USAID and the military is tasked with soft and hard power strategies that have proven problematic to manage as ‘an integrated grand strategy’. Identifying variables that accurately indicate the success or otherwise of smart power as a counter-terror strategy is problematic. Nevertheless a tentative correlation can be drawn between high levels of US aid and low levels of trust in the US in frontline Islamic states. This has led to slippage between hard and soft power and un-smart policy. Consequently a gap has emerged between what the US hopes that the international community will respond to in terms of smart power as a counter-terror initiative and what actually happens. The US has tended to revert to hard power tools in the face of this gap. I argue that foreign aid must not only be soft but ‘sticky’ in order for smart power strategies to succeed.

Citation

Eadie, P. (in press). Counter-terrorism, smart power and the United States. Global Policy, 7(3), https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12356

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 17, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jul 8, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 9, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 9, 2016
• Journal: Global Power
• Print ISSN: 1758-5880
• Electronic ISSN: 1758-5899
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 3
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12356
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/801708
• Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12356/abstract
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Eadie, P. (2016), Counter-terrorism, Smart Power and the United States. Global Policy, v. 7(3), which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12356. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.