Study Sources C, D and E Using these sources and your own knowledge, analyze the concept of soft power and explain why U.S. soft power has been damaged during the last decade.
Source C
Everyone is familiar with hard power. We know that military and economic might often get others to change their position. Hard power can rest on inducements ("carrots") or threats ("sticks"). But sometimes you can get the outcomes you want without tangible threats or payoffs. The indirect way to get what you want has sometimes been called "the second face of power". A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because others countries - admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness - want to follow it. In this sense, it is also important to set the agenda and attract others in world politics, and not only to force them to change by threatening military force or economic sanctions. This soft power - getting others to want the outcomes that you want - co-opts people rather than coerces them....
The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority).
Source D
[I]n its zeal to reorder the international system the Bush administration created a Petri dish for massive amounts of terrorism in Iraq between 2003 and 2007, with immeasurable damage to U.S. soft power in the Muslim world. And although the United States had maintained widespread support for its goals in Afghanistan, by the end of 2008, U.S. and Allied casualties in that war were increasing, along with evidence of a resurgent Taliban. In the 2008 presidential election, the administration faced bipartisan criticism for having neglected Afghanistan as a consequence of mishandling Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. detainee facility at Guantanamo, which had been a lightning rod for international criticism, with nearly two hundred fifty inmates as of January 2009
Source E
The National Security Agency (NSA) may not have grasped that its alleged surveillance of European citizens would be a major breach of the spirit of US-EU relations. Europe's trust in the US is nevertheless subsequently in freefall. The EU response to the allegations has been measured, offering time for clarification and explanation. But if the administration does not move aggressively to stem the fallout, the damage to US soft power in Europe could be the most severe since the run-up to the Iraq war. The latest reports of NSA programs conducted in Germany and on EU institutions have created the potential for a populist backlash that could ricochet throughout the European political system by affecting US relations with the European Parliament (EP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, and Germany's September national election.
Europe's problems with the US's usage of private data didn't just start with Edward Snowden's recent disclosures of the NSA's surveillance programs. In fact, navigating the highly sensitive area of intelligence sharing has been one of the front lines of the US-EU relationship under the Obama administration. Brussels became the epicenter for negotiating the contours and limits of US access to EU data. These negotiations also served as grounds for a fundamental recalibration of the US's relationship with the EU in general and the EP in particular.