Is power still powerful? That’s the question. If we take into account our present world, economic crisis, difficulties to define good solutions and efficient solutions to the economic crisis… Is power powerful? American defeat in Vietnam, chaos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya… is power powerful? Deadlocks in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, is power powerful? All these issues are clearly demonstrating that power is not really adapted to our present world, or more exactly the traditional vision of power is no more adapted to the new conditions of a global order. We have to admit that power experienced many transformations and has to face new adaptations which were rather difficult. Let’s have a look on our recent history. States were joined in the international arena by peoples and societies. Societies, social actors are more and more present in the international arena. Is power powerful when it has to face societies as it was when it had to face only other states? The traditional vision of power is perfectly adapted to an interstate competition, but is it adapted to competition between states and societies, between state actors and non-state actors? Second transformation, the rising role of culture. The traditional international arena during the 19th century but also the major part of the 20th century was a monocultural arena in which all the main actors were sharing the same culture. What about this new international arena in which different actors coming from different cultures are competing? Is then the traditional power so fruitful and so efficient, so powerful that it was previously? Now third transformation the proliferation of states. When the UN was created in 1945 it was created by 51 states, now there are 193 states in UN. Is it possible to use power when such a proliferation created microstates for which the competition didn’t have the same meaning. Is power now working when bipolarity has collapsed? Bipolarity was supporting the traditional vision of power, bipolarity was structured around two major powers, two super powers: the US and USSR. Now bipolarity is over, we are in a post bipolar world, and in this post bipolar world it is very hard, difficult first to find a new hierarchy of powers, but also to define the rules of a clear competition between states which are so different. And overall, power had to face the globalization as a new world order and globalization is directly questioning the traditional concept of power. First because globalization introduced interdependence. Interdependence is playing a major role in international relations and is even the substitute to sovereignty. Sovereignty was holding the very clear power competition, but what about interdependence? When states are more and more interdependent at the economic level but also at the cultural level but also at the social level, what power is able to do? That’s the question. What is the status of power in a world of interdependence? Is power still acting when states are so interplaying with such a density? Is power still powerful when sovereignty is decreasing? Is power still powerful when coercion is less and less efficient? As we can observe for instance about the sanctions, when sanctions are taken by powerful states these sanctions are playing against those who are deciding them. What about power when we have to face an increasing number of actors? The status of power is clear when you have a small number of competing actors, but what about now when we have not only 193 state actors, but when we have potentially 7 billion of individuals playing on the international arena. Is power powerful when it has to face individuals and social actors? And what about power facing the new way of communication, the new instrument of communication, the new technology, in which individuals are able to get in touch with each other, and so are able to structure a new kind of social and international social relations. Power is probably not adapted in its traditional version to face this new kind of situation, and the real question is what about power in a world in which states have no more the monopoly of the international functions? Ladies and Gentlemen, four consequences of these very high but underestimated transformations. First military power is more and more powerless. We could observe that during the decolonization war, when France was defeated by the small Vietnamese army in Dien Bien Phu. But US experience the same when the US was defeated in 1975 in Vietnam, but the same for Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and so on, the same for Libya. Is military power adapted to these new conditions? Probably not. The second question is: is soft power a clear and efficient substitute? When the US was defeated in Vietnam some American scholars like Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane elaborated the concept of soft power and established the hypothesis that when hard power is no more working, soft power can be considered as a substitute. Soft power is a strong power, probably, for diffusing the dominant culture, the cultural hegemony of the super power. But the question is: if you drink Coca Cola or if you wear blue jeans, do you, for this reason, support the American foreign policy? The reality is that there is no transitivity between the support you give to soft power and the support which is expected in the field of diplomacy and foreign policy. The third question is what about power in a world in which protest is playing more and more a central and major role? There are in our present world so many new protest diplomacies or deviant diplomacies, in which protesting against an hegemony is much more important that proposing a new international order. Is the traditional vision of power able to face this new culture of international protest? It’s quite clear that it couldn’t. And so the real problem in our present interdependent and global world is what hegemony now does mean? Robert Gilpin and Charles Kindleberger elaborated the concept of hegemonic stability which they put that hegemony was the only way for ordering an interdependent world. That was probably true during the 20th century, but is it so clear and obvious by now? That’s the problem, is hegemony now a stabilizer or is hegemony destabilizing the world? That's to say, first hegemony is not able to work and it is failing, but the second point is that when hegemony is too much evident, is too much visible, the risk is high that this hegemony creates instability, protests, conflicts, tensions, anti-Americanism and war. That is why the Obama administration moved to another concept, the famous concept of smart power, in which hard power is considered to be restricted, to be limited and to be mixed with a very cautious use of soft power. This concept of smart power leads to the idea of a light footprint, the superpower is supposed now to leave only a light footprint on the international order and to the concept of leadership from behind, leading from behind, that’s to say to be much less ambitious in the definition of the new international order. This is clearly a revising conception of hegemony in which hegemony is lessened, in which hegemony is questioned, in which hegemony is challenged and in which we have to reconsider the real capacities of power.
