noun

• A persuasive approach to international relations, typically involving the use of economic or cultural influence.

  Compare with hard power

  ‘For a man supposedly plotting a leadership coup in London, he was actually giving his own quiet demonstration of soft power.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The Iranian government has seized the opportunity to wield the soft power of persuasion.’
  • ‘An audience member asked Rumsfeld for his opinion on soft power.’
  • ‘Now, with signs of a reviving economy, Japan's soft power may increase even more.’
  • ‘In the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism, American soft power was at its height.’
  • ‘The past few years have been difficult ones for American soft power.’
  • ‘Yet, within a decade, America had recovered from the loss of soft power.’
  • ‘Historically, Americans have been good at wielding soft power.’
  • ‘There is no reason for realists to neglect soft power.’
  • ‘The reach of American "soft power" is extraordinary.’
  • ‘In four years these efforts at projecting what the EU likes to call "soft power" conspicuously got nowhere.’
  • ‘The foreign policy experts call it public diplomacy, or soft power.’
  • ‘That's a great investment in our soft power.’
  • ‘This aspect of power is "soft power" - getting people to want what you want.’
  • ‘Those cities with the most soft power are also the most cosmopolitan (incidentally, they rarely have referendums on citizenship).’
  • ‘Soft power is, I predict, not going do it.’
  • ‘Against soft power, aggregation does not work.’
  • ‘First, the concept depends on making a distinction between hard and soft power.’
  • ‘This depends whether you think that soft power actually matters.’
  • ‘Just as there is hard and soft power, so tolerance comes in different densities.’