Power, Global Contexts of

Decolonization and the Decline of Hard Power

What realism fails to grasp in the 21st century is the declining relevance of hard power to the resolution of international conflicts and the corresponding rise in significance of soft power, whether or not linked to an actor possessing inferior hard power. Even a superficial consideration of the history of internationally relevant conflicts since the end of World War II seems to validate this generalization. The decolonization movement as it unfolded in one country after another illustrated the potency of a historical trend that linked the soft power benefits of legitimacy (for instance, the legitimacy of self-determination struggles as contrasted with the illegitimacy of colonial claims) as overcoming the handicaps of military inferiority (as measured by weaponry and battlefield outcomes). Overall, yet with some exceptions, the trend has favored political victories for actors successfully combining legitimacy advantages with a soft power approach. This has meant outcomes in colonial wars taking a decolonizing form of sovereign independence in the aftermath of more or less bloody conflicts.

Reviewing this pattern of results, it seems that the impact of legitimacy shifted the relation of political forces in a manner that contradicts realist assessments. At one extreme, decolonization struggles were bloody, as in Indochina and Algeria, while at the other extreme, the violence was minimal, as with the ending of British colonial rule in India thanks to the Gandhian movement based on nonviolent militancy. But in almost every case, the outcome was the same, a victory for the militarily weaker, yet politically more legitimate, side. Part of the argument here is that power has been transformed by altered historical conditions, especially the spread of a nationalist ethos to the non-Western world and the degree to which exemplary soft power victories by the weaker side strengthened the commitment to accept high costs because of the demonstration effect of outcomes elsewhere.

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