Quiet Power is Soulful, Not Soft

A short time ago I posted a short essay on “quiet power,” demonstrated effectively by my best sheep herding Border Collies.

As a footnote to that essay I draw your attention to an astute opinion piece by Michael Posner in the New York Times, dated May 18, 2025, headlined (online) “Trump Is Destroying a Core American Value. The World Will Notice.” Here are two of the opening paragraphs:

In the late 1980s, Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who died this month, developed the concept of “soft power.” His central premise, that the United States enhances its global influence by promoting values like human rights and democracy, has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades across both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Donald Trump has made clear that he fundamentally rejects this vision. As president, he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of the State Department that will cripple its capacity to promote American values abroad. At the center of this effort are drastic cuts to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — the State Department’s core institution for advancing soft power, which I led under President Barack Obama. Unless Congress intervenes, the debasement of the bureau’s role will impair America’s ability to challenge authoritarianism, support democratic movements and provide independent analysis to inform U.S. foreign policy. The long-term result will be a United States that is weaker, less principled and increasingly sidelined as authoritarian powers like Russia and China offer their own transactional models of global engagement.

I certainly agree that “promoting values like human rights and democracy,” gives the U.S. more influence. I would add that in making the world a more humane place, such foreign policy also makes all us earthlings safer, happier, and stronger.

And strength is what it is all about, so I much prefer “quiet power” to “soft power.”

Mahatma Gandhi was not a promoter of power that was soft. Both he and Martin Luther King, Jr., avoided using the term “passive resistance” for their chosen, world-changing tactics. Gandhi chose a Sanskrit term, Satyagraha, used in the Hindu Upanishads to denote power that is non-violent and embraces productive suffering, but is anything but soft or passive. Satyagraha is making a strong and active stand against negative power—the power that forces others to suffer. Sometimes Satyagraha is called “soul force,” or “truth force.” I prefer “soul force,” as a synonym of “quiet power” since both of these phrases mean something far more comprehensive and far less passive than the words “truth” or even “power” alone can carry.

What we all need as individuals, as communities, and as nations, is the force that comes not from ideas, values, words, or silence alone, but from “faith active in love” (Galatians 5:6)—that is, where faith, or pistis in Greek, is faithfulness—faithfulness to a faithful God, or if you are squeamish about religious language, faithfulness to what is legitimately valued. By that I mean all of us know, deep in our hearts, that life itself is sacred, and that it is poison for all of us when one of us is forced to suffer. It is universal poison to deny the essentials of life to any person, or indeed any living thing on earth.

Power which arises from being honest with what is within our souls is Satyagraha—is quiet, but very firm and strong power. Soulful people need now to fight off Trumps trashing of this universal (not just American) value.