A US military leader stresses ideas over firepower

The head of US Southern Command uses a soft approach to combat anti-American fervor.

from the July 3, 2007 edition

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Use of 'smart power'

This isn't the first time a military commander has thought to walk a bit more softly. But over the past several years, taking a so-called smart power approach to engage other nations was virtually banned from the Pentagon's vernacular.

The concept reemerged under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, a four-year study of military capabilities and strategies. Now it's starting to take root.

"Even under Rumsfeld, civilian leadership came around to this idea of building partner capacity as the long pole in the tent," says analyst Michele Flournoy, cofounder of a new Washington think tank, The Center for a New American Security. "The instincts of Southern Command and others to try to engage, preconflict, to kind of shape the conflict, to build relationships, not only on the military side but using other instruments of national power, is a very good instinct."

"That," she adds, "is how we're going to gradually recover our standing in the region."

At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another think tank in Washington, a "commission on smart power" is studying the approach. Many agencies outside the Defense Department have been starved for resources over the years, notes Rick Barton, a CSIS analyst who is on the commission. It will take some time to shift the mind-set – and the money – to what many believe is the more effective approach to addressing global problems, he says. He likens it to changing the course of a big ship.

"People are very much aware of needing a wiser mix, and Washington has picked that up," he says. "It's quite a supertanker."

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at center stage, Southern Command is in many ways the "forgotten command." Though its responsibilities include overseeing Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where about 400 terrorism suspects are held, the command's focus has been on lower-profile missions like fighting drug smuggling and dispensing humanitarian aid in places like Honduras.

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