‘Soft power’ is a buzzword these days. What is it exactly? : NPR

A protester carries a sign that equates foreign aid with soft power during a rally near the U.S. Capitol to protest the dismantling of USAID, the international agency charged with dispensing humanitarian aid around the world on behalf of the United States.

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“Soft power” is a hot topic in Washington, D.C. these days.

The question: Has Donald Trump ‘s gutting of foreign aid meant a diminishment of soft power.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) accused the administration of “recklessly gutting American soft power and providing a huge strategic opening to China” in a February 2025 speech on the Senate floor.

That same month, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a supporter of President Trump’s policies, said he was a “big advocate for soft power.”

That raises another question for those who aren’t up on foreign aid terminology: What exactly is soft power?

American political scientist Joseph Nye is credited with popularizing the term, which he defined as “the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment.” But that can mean different things depending on whether you wield soft power or are influenced by it. He brought it to the public eye in his 1990 book Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power.

Since then, the term has become so much a part of the lexicon that there are folks who try to quantify it. In the past year, American soft power has declined in a variety of measures, everything from perceived friendliness to working towards common goals, like climate action, according to David Haigh, CEO of Brandfinance, which produces an annual soft power index through surveys with 175,000 people across the globe.

“It’s not surprising, because the current administration is rebalancing its foreign policy much more toward hard power and economic power and away from soft power,” Haigh says, referring to the aid cuts and the U.S. pulling away from major international organizations. “I think it’s probably because there is an impatience to get results. And one of the things about soft power is you can’t be impatient.”

NPR spoke to scholars of soft power around the world to understand how it can be defined and deployed through foreign aid.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

“Making people like you”

Samuel Brazys studies soft power and international development at University College Dublin

How do you define soft power?
Soft power is about getting other people to adopt what you want, to adopt your ideas, to adopt your worldview without force. Basically making people like you because they like you.

What got you interested in studying soft power?
My interest in this goes back 10 or 15 years to when China was really starting to rise on the international stage and starting to contest global norms, global ideas, and going after the hearts and minds in places around the world.

Can you give an example of a time you saw it playing out in real life?
When I was living in Micronesia, the Chinese embassy there brought through an acrobat troupe that performed at the local college. It was this fantastic show. It was the biggest piece of entertainment that anyone had seen there in years. It was 100% soft power at work, and certainly won the hearts and minds of the audience in the moment. Much of soft power rests on moments that create cultural influence.

Where do you think U.S. soft power stands today?
My impression is that soft power was people from all over the world wanting to move to the United States. I think a good gauge that we’ve seen is that people are starting to have more reservations about moving to the United States. That used to be everybody’s dream. And some people are having fewer reservations about moving to China, especially from places in the Global South. And I think that’s a really good indicator, because if I’m willing to do everything it takes to leave my home and leave my family to start a new life, I must really like something about what’s happening in that system, right? And so, the intensity of your desire to do that might be a good reflection of how much soft power that country is exercising.

“MTV was seen as the best form of entertainment”

Salvador Santino Regilme, studies American soft power at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is the author of Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia

What got you interested in studying soft power?
I originally come from the Philippines. Despite all the kinds of abuses that the U.S. government did before the Second World War during the American occupation, the Philippines has one of the highest positive public perceptions of U.S. power in world politics. I think that is fascinating.

How do you define soft power?
For me, the soft power of a particular country refers to the instruments that a state can use to actually shape positive perceptions of that country, such as the number of vaccines being distributed, but also ideational elements, for example, the number of students over the last few generations being sent on scholarships to the United States.

An example of a time when you saw it play out in real life?
When I was growing up in the 1990s, American music through MTV was seen as the best form of entertainment, rather than Filipino music. And in terms of education, most of the people within my generation and my brightest classmates opted to go to the United States for their graduate studies.

I think the most concrete program would be the Fulbright Program [the one for international students that sends them to the U.S.]. Large numbers of our professionals and top leaders in the country studied in the United States and are now in politics, elected officials in powerful positions, even in the military. One president of the Philippines in the 1990s was Fidel Ramos and he graduated from West Point.

“No matter how powerful a state is, it cannot rely fully on its hard power”

Oluwaseon Tella is the head of the future of diplomacy at the University of Johannesburg

What got you interested in studying soft power?
I realized that no matter how powerful a state is, it cannot rely fully on its hard power, and there are certain actions that require soft power. For instance, if you’re promoting democracy, you need soft power. If you want to fight terrorism, you need hard power. But there are situations that require both. It’s one thing killing terrorists, it’s another thing to be able to dissuade would-be terrorists from joining terrorist groups.

How do you define soft power?
Because I’m an African scholar, my definition of soft power reflects the African reality. It’s the capacity of an actor to influence the behavior of other actors through its philosophy, its political values, foreign policies and cultural exports.

An example of a time when you saw it play out in real life?
After 9/11 and the war in Iraq, the United States’ image declined across the globe. But in the context of Africa, the United States image was stable. It’s because George Bush implemented various American policies after 9/11 because he was trying to counter the influence of terrorists. That was why the U.S. spent a lot of money in Africa through USAID and through PEPFAR –- the program for HIV/AIDS. It was highly appreciated, and it’s been a big source of U.S. soft power until the Donald Trump administration.

Where do you think American soft power stands today?
I think it definitely took a hit with the foreign aid cuts of the Trump administration. But also, amongst the major players in Africa, American soft power seems to be the most sophisticated and robust. So even if a particular aspect of American soft power may decline, you may not feel the impact that much.

“They were showing up on time for appointments because Americans show up on time”

Jon Alterman is chair of global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. 

Can you recount a moment when you saw soft power playing out in real life?
I was in Egypt in the 1990s doing research and people told me stories about Americans they had met 40 years before, who left lessons with them that they treated as if it was yesterday. They were showing up on time for appointments because Americans show up on time for appointments. There was a guy I met who told me he had an American instructor and every time he asked the guy a question, the American said, why not? That was the only English he remembered and it shaped the next 40 years of his life. That kind of connection creates soft power, creates people who want to behave in the way you want them to, and not because you force them.

What do you think has been the most effective soft power tool of the United States?
People aspire to American education and medical care. People still see American medical care as the best in the world, scientific advancements, too. And there’s been all kinds of humanitarian assistance the United States has given.

But governments sometimes want to hide that they are accepting assistance from the United States.

When I was doing research in Egypt, I learned the U.S. gave some trains to the Egyptians in the 1950s and the Egyptians had taken off the symbols of American aid on the trains and painted over them. American officials were dismayed and there was an exchange about how the U.S. could weld labels on the trains so that the Egyptians couldn’t take it off.

What is the war in Iran doing to U.S. soft power right now?
I think the argument I’ve heard from people in the Middle East is they are seeing the true face of the United States being after its own interest, and that’s not new. It’s just the United States isn’t trying to hide it anymore. There certainly is a sense now amidst the Iran war that people and governments are paying the cost of American decisions. It’s also happening in Asia and around the world where people are dealing with higher prices and shortages of certain kinds of commodities and interrupted shipping. They say we didn’t ask for this. Nobody talked to us about it, and we’re paying the cost every single day.

But ultimately, I think the legacy and the impact on America’s soft power and reputation isn’t going to be judged in April 2026. It’ll be judged in April 2027 or 2028 when people see what [the war] has done over the coming months and years.