Soft power is the ability to affect others to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. It supplements rather than replaces hard power, but if you are attractive, you do not have to spend as much on carrots and sticks as otherwise would be the case. Soft power has always been important, but it is increasingly so in an information age when a greater number of issues depend not just on whose army wins but on whose story wins. …
Soft power always depends on the perceptions of others, and those perceptions are framed by their situations and experiences, as your poll shows. For example, Kosovo’s high approval of the U.S. is not caused by Trump, but by our support for their coming into existence two decades ago. But Canada’s precipitous drop in approval can probably be attributed to Trump’s disrespectful tweets about Trudeau and the bullying attitudes the U.S. took toward the renegotiation of NAFTA. CONT.
Gallup