Soft Power and Hard Power: An Assessment of Obama’s War on Terrorism

Abstract

The attacks of September 11 2001 on the United States triggered that country’s enormous efforts to counterterrorism in order to prevent the re-occurrence of that event on the soil of the United States. President George Bush Jr. responded to the attacks by excessive application of hard power with the objective of bringing the perpetrators to justice. President Obama coming into office in 2009 promised a departure from the United States excessive reliance on hard power application in dealing with perceived enemies. The study proves that, President Obama has adopted the combination of soft power and hard power when it comes to the fight against terrorism even though he appeared pro soft power prior to coming into office. Findings from this study shows that, the application of both hard power and soft power by the Obama Administration has been relatively successful resulting in the killing of Osama Bin Laden but at the same time terrorist groups have emerged in various parts of the world bringing to question the success of the combination approach proposed by Nye as it failed to provide a framework of how much hard power and soft power should be applied in a given situation. Recommendations include an all-round national strategy and global involvement of other partners that suggests significant roles of diplomacy and development alongside military defence and application of hard power.