Kill The Czars: A No-Nonsense Approach to Security

James Jay Carafano

Politics, Americas

Swapping soft power for hard power isn't a strategy.

There are smarter ways than “soft power” for the United States to outmatch its competitors for global influence. The next administration should focus on building competitive “power-niche capabilities”—deliverables focused on specific tasks and directed to achieve specific outcomes. This will give America, and its friends and allies, a much keener edge in the fight to preserve their freedom, prosperity and security in today’s messy world.

Post-Bush Governance

The Bush administration’s “long war” approach to fighting terrorism prompted many critics to prescribe nonlethal alternatives for dealing with international security threats. Most notable was the argument for soft power—using instruments like diplomacy and negotiation as an alternative to military force. But there were other suggestions as well: whole-of-government solutions, for example, that proposed harnessing all parts of the federal government to deal with big problems. Another alternative—the man-on-horseback solutions—called for empowering dedicated “czars” to whip through all the red tape and tackle tough tasks.

The Obama administration embraced all these alternatives, often simultaneously, and with decidedly mixed results. Soft power efforts included the “road to zero” initiative designed to inspire the world’s nuclear powers to eliminate their nukes voluntarily. That effort yielded zero results—other than to leave America with an aging nuclear arsenal in desperate need of modernization.