Posted on April 5, 2021.
World War II is raging in the Pacific. The United States prepares to carry out a “strategic bombing” of Japan, its main enemy in the region. Secretary of War Henry S. Stimson implores President Harry Truman not to bomb Kyoto, initially one of the main military targets. Stimson, who particularly admired Japanese culture, knew that the city of Kyoto, where he had spent his honeymoon, was a true center of culture and tradition. Eventually, Kyoto did not meet the same fate as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Perhaps this passage reflects in its most tragic and extreme dimension the importance of soft power in international relations: how the ability to shape the preferences of people in another country through culture, art or values can make the difference in whether a city is bombed or not. In a more peaceful context such as the current one, but with no fewer geopolitical tensions or health risks, international cooperation is also an unbeatable source of soft power; that is, a source of admiration, gratitude and empathy from the recipient, and of genuine global responsibility, prestige, leadership and certainly political influence from the one who projects it. In this time of the pandemic, vaccines against COVID-19 evidently fulfill this role.