Pentagon Pushes for ‘Soft Power,’ Interagency Cooperation - AFPS

The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy is the latest in a series of Defense Department messages highlighting the need to develop a US foreign policy with greater emphasis on so-called “soft powers” such as diplomacy and international aid. The broad-brush document released yesterday includes a section that strikes at the need for greater cooperation, or “jointness,” between the department and its interagency partners if American operations abroad are to succeed. “Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that military success alone is insufficient to achieve victory,” the strategy reads. “We must not forget our hard-learned lessons or allow the important soft power capabilities developed because of them to atrophy or even disappear.” Beyond security, the “essential ingredients” of long-term success include economic development, institution building and enforcing the rule of law, the document states. To achieve these ends, the strategy recommends closer coordination among other US departments and agencies, state and local governments, partners and allies, and international and multilateral organizations.

In my limited opinion (hereafter to be designated by IMLO)
the Pentagon asking The State Deprtment to do more seems
quirky. Maybe they see the well drying up, or have been so
overstretched they are asking for a time-out.

"Soft-power" sounds like a clock spring that needs winding,
a flacid subject awaiting a glimpse of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
It's diplomatic-speak not hard-charging-speak.

It's simply "diplomacy". This PC corporate speak makes me
wonder about the "New Army" and the cha-cha-cha-changes
they seem to be going through. (with an apology to David Bowie)