Yet, military power has its limits. In Vietnam, the United States won most tactical battles but did not win the war at a strategic level; in Afghanistan, the Soviets left without any gains, followed by the Americans, only for the Taliban to return within days. Controlling territory does not mean owning it. Hence, the concept of power expanded to encompass the economy. A state can subjugate its adversary without a single bullet, through sanctions, blockades, denial of markets, the financial system, and technology. Thus Iraq was exhausted in the 1990s, Russian banks were cut off from the SWIFT system in 2022, and China suffered due to restricted access to advanced chips.
Then came the deeper concept: soft power, as coined by Joseph Nye in 1990, defined as the ability of a state to get others to want what it wants through attraction rather than coercion. Media is at its core; Hollywood transported America's image to every home, satellite stations and social media platforms reshaped the balances of Arab media, and wars today are fought on screens and social media just as much as they are on the battlefield. The impact extends to literature and culture: the Nobel Prize awarded to author Naguib Mahfouz opened a window onto Arab society that political means could never open, and the Korean Wave turned South Korea into a global destination. An attractive state wins allies without having to buy them.
However, hard power has returned in a new form: drones striking at a fraction of a fighter jet's cost, hypersonic missiles reducing warning time to minutes, and cyberattacks crippling electricity grids and banks without a single bullet. In Ukraine, cheap drones hunted down tanks and sank ships without a fleet; in Gaza, overwhelming air superiority did not easily translate into stable control; and the Iranian-American-Israeli confrontation was waged with missiles and drones without a single soldier crossing a border. Inflicting pain from a distance has become easier and cheaper, while achieving decisive victory through occupation has become harder and more expensive.
More dangerously, these weapons have become accessible to unstable states and paramilitary forces, and may one day reach terrorist organizations, posing a greater threat. Therefore, states looking toward the future do not strive to change their weapons as much as they strive to change their doctrines and build what Nye calls "smart power": knowing when to coerce, when to allure, and when to combine both. The traditional army remains an indispensable deterrent, as brandishing power often obviates the need to use it. Yet, hard power without attraction creates enemies, while attraction without protecting power remains exposed.
Power has transitioned from the cannon to the bank, and from the bank to the screen and the book, only to return to weapons in the form of a drone and a line of code. Today, a strong state is not the one that possesses a single tool, but the one that wields smart power—combining all tools, keeping pace with these transformations or staying ahead of them rather than lagging behind. Whoever waits for a crisis to learn its lessons pays the full price.
