THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2026 23 America’s Soft Power On the global stage, U.S. “soft power” has allowed us to attract and persuade rather than to coerce. But soft power depends on an audience’s belief that the exemplar is genuine. When democratic institutions visibly malfunction—when elections are violently contested, when government institutions are instrumentalized for political ends, when leaders are not committed to providing truthful information, when nonpartisan experts are prevented from serving—that credibility erodes. Our adversaries do not simply take note. They weaponize the development. Russian and Chinese state media regularly amplify images of democratic dysfunction because discrediting the American model is itself a strategic objective. Every domestic fracture becomes a foreign policy liability for the United States. Our democratic allies watch closely too, and what they see shapes their calculations. The network of alliances, international institutions, and norms that the United States designed was built on an implicit premise: that U.S. leadership was reliable, predictable, and underwritten by a durable domestic consensus. When that consensus frays, allies hedge. They ask whether U.S. security commitments and treaties will survive the next election cycle. They begin diversifying—economically, diplomatically, and militarily. This is not anti-Americanism; it is risk management in a fractured global disorder. Finally, a dimension that is harder to quantify but impossible to ignore is America’s moral standing to speak on behalf of democratic values. U.S. diplomacy has always blended realpolitik and idealism in an uneasy tension. The idealist strand, which insists that how governments treat their own citizens is a legitimate subject of international concern, has been among the most consequential contributions the United States has made to the international order. That strand depends on a moral standing that must be continuously earned. It cannot survive on historical reputation alone. Unfinished Work Given these realities, it is clear that in order for our Foreign Service to compete effectively, we, the American people, must strengthen and repair our democracy. It will not be an easy path, but there is no other path worthy of our Founders’ vision. As Lincoln wisely counseled in the Gettysburg Address, it is “for us, the living, ... to be dedicated to the unfinished work” that our Founders and those who have served our nation nobly advanced. At Gettysburg, Lincoln did not ask his audience to be hopeful. He asked them to be resolved. In hope, one waits. In resolve, one acts. For America’s diplomats, resolve means staying in the arena: writing, testifying, supporting AFSA and its right to serve as an advocate for the Foreign Service as outlined in the Foreign Service Act of 1980, and mentoring the next generation of officers who are watching to see whether a diplomatic career is worth the sacrifice. For all Americans, resolve means understanding that democracy is saved in school board meetings, in local newsrooms kept alive by paid subscriptions, and in state legislatures where the rules governing free and fair elections are written. Democracy is saved when we choose to listen to one another across our divides and seek out information beyond our own echo chambers. Democracy is saved when we hold our leaders accountable for corruption and self-enrichment, or when we find the courage to demand that our leaders reject the politics of division, which serves them but diminishes us. Democracy is saved when each one of us asks, “What can I do today to make my democracy stronger?” Poland is slowly rebuilding its judiciary. Brazil is reclaiming its democratic institutions. Hungary finally rejected competitive authoritarianism in favor of something more hopeful for its people. They did not do so because conditions “became” favorable. They did so because enough of their citizens decided that the cost of inaction was higher than the cost of engagement. In his victory speech on April 12, the leader of Hungary’s winning opposition party Péter Magyar harkened back to President John F. Kennedy when he said: “Today, we won because Hungarians did not ask what their country could do for them; they asked what they could do for their country.” Lincoln did not promise that our union would survive. He exhorted us to fight for it. The unfinished work remains, and it is incumbent on all Americans to undertake it together. n Leaders of competitive authoritarian countries attack the systems and sources of information that they fear may weaken their hold on power.
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