“The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”
So wrote Thucydides in the “History of the Peloponnesian War,” and the Greek historian’s cold-eyed observation still holds.
But in today’s world, strength doesn’t always present itself in the form of armies or aircraft carriers. The means by which power manifests has expanded, growing more subtle, more layered and often more dangerous.
As a result, it’s no longer enough to talk about power in purely military or economic terms. Rather, we need to distinguish between three overlapping but distinct forms of power: hard, soft and sharp.
These three concepts of power are more than just academic abstractions. They are real-world tools to, respectively, coerce, attract and manipulate the people and governments of other nations. They are used by governments to shape the choices of others. Sometimes they operate in concert; often, however, they collide.
Hard power is likely the most familiar of the three powers – and the one relied on by nations for much of history. It refers to the ability to coerce through force or economic pressure. It’s the stuff of tanks, sanctions, warships and threats. When Russia bombs Kyiv, when the United States sends aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Strait or when China uses trade restrictions to punish foreign governments, that’s hard power in action.
Hard power doesn’t ask. It demands.
But coercion alone rarely brings lasting influence. That’s where soft power comes in. The concept, popularized by American political scientist Joseph Nye, refers to the ability to attract rather than compel. It’s about credibility, legitimacy and cultural appeal. Think of the global prestige of American universities, the enduring reach of English-language media or the aspirational pull of Western legal and political norms – and Western culture, too.
Soft power persuades by offering a model others want to emulate.
Yet in today’s climate, soft power is losing ground. It depends on moral authority, and that authority is increasingly in doubt for governments around the world that previously leaned into soft power.
The United States, still a cultural juggernaut, exports polarization and political instability alongside prestige television and tech innovation. China’s efforts to cultivate soft power through Confucius Institutes and diplomatic charm offensives are consistently undermined by its authoritarian reflexes.
The values once seen as attractive are now viewed, fairly or not, as hypocritical or hollow.
This has opened the gap for the third concept: sharp power. Sharp power operates as the dark mirror of soft power. Coined by the National Endowment for Democracy in 2017, it describes how authoritarian states in particular, but not excusively, exploit the openness of democracies to manipulate them from within.
Sharp power doesn’t coerce, it doesn’t attract … it deceives.
It relies on disinformation, covert influence, cyberattacks and strategic corruption. And it doesn’t want your admiration – it wants your confusion, your division and your doubt.
This is the domain of Russian election interference, Chinese control of social media algorithms and the covert influence operations the U.S. engages against China.
Sharp power is about shaping narratives in foreign societies without ever firing a shot or closing a trade deal. And unlike hard power, it often goes unnoticed – until the damage is done.
What makes today’s diplomatic landscape so difficult is that these forms of power aren’t cleanly separated. They bleed into one another. China’s Belt and Road Initiative combines hard-power leverage with soft-power branding and is quietly backed by sharp power tactics that pressure critics and silence dissent. Russia, lacking the economic heft or cultural appeal of the U.S. or China, has mastered sharp power out of necessity, using it to destabilize, distract and divide.
For liberal democracies, this creates a profound strategic dilemma. They still enjoy hard-power dominance and residual soft-power appeal. But they are vulnerable to sharp power – and increasingly tempted to use it themselves. The risk is that in trying to fight manipulation with manipulation, they hollow out their own institutions and values.
This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used but rarely explained.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Andrew Latham, Macalester College
Read more: The Thucydides Trap: Vital lessons from ancient Greece for China and the US … or a load of old claptrap? What is isolationism? The history and politics of an often-maligned foreign policy concept What is a ‘revisionist’ state, and what are they trying to revise?
Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
