rssCLINTON CONFIRMATION: Can We Have Some Smart-Power Clarity, Please?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 11:53 am
- 4 Comments
“It shouldn’t be an either/or debate” between military force, diplomacy and development, Clinton says, “we want to blend those.” But what does that really mean? Right now it means that soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be diplomats and development workers as well. But it’s not clear at all what Clinton means by “smart power [as] one of the tools that we have” and will use in the future. U.N. Ambassador-designate Susan Rice is not going to pull out a gun or a drum of cooking oil on the floor of the United Nations. This stuff shouldn’t be a buzzword.
The term “smart power” was coined by Harvard’s Joe Nye and Richard Armitage, President George W. Bush’s former deputy secretary of state. Read their work and ask yourself if it means more than a blandishment not to rely just on military force, which is an uncontroversial position.
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4 Comments
Comment posted January 13, 2009 @ 10:29 am
The Washington Post referred to “smart power” as:
“One of HRC's favorite buzz phrases, but what does this really mean?
“Dumb power” is bombs, I guess — but isn't “smart power” just another
word for diplomacy?”
For clarification:
http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2008/NyeTes…
This my friend is the “dumb power” that “HRC” wishes to reverse.
I am confident that Sen. Clinton will answer every single question, dodging any attempted hits with articulate and intellectual responses.
Comment posted January 13, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
Actually it was coined by Suzanne Nossel several years earlier and was the title of a 2004 Foreign Affairs article she wrote.
Comment posted January 13, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
The Washington Post referred to “smart power” as:
“One of HRC's favorite buzz phrases, but what does this really mean?
'Dumb power' is bombs, I guess — but isn't 'smart power' just another
word for diplomacy?”
For clarification:
http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2008/NyeTes…
This my friend is the “dumb power” that “HRC” wishes to reverse.
I am confident that Sen. Clinton will answer every single question, dodging any attempted hits with articulate and intellectual responses.
Comment posted January 13, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
Actually it was coined by Suzanne Nossel several years earlier and was the title of a 2004 Foreign Affairs article she wrote.
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