The persistent myths of ‘Soft Power’

The difference between the upcoming U.S. presidential election and previous iterations is that Republicans no longer have the upper on foreign policy. Their self-proclaimed monopoly on national security expertise hand and belief in a muscular international posture collapsed with John McCain’s presidential bid. We can now have honest foreign policy debates on how to actually handle real-world challenges like nuclear proliferation, the rise of China, terrorism, failed states rather than assuming a priori which side would be better at tackling them.