Calling this sophistry is not polemical. Sophistry was never about lying outright. It was about persuasive coherence in the service of authority. IR excels at this. It teaches how to speak about power in ways that preserve its prerogatives, how to critique without consequence and how to manage domination without ever calling it by name
Soft power is often felt and almost always unseen. As a concept introduced by Joseph Nye in the early 1980s, soft power is thought of as a specific ability to get what you want. The ability to get what you want can be facilitated through coercion and payment (hard power) or attraction and persuasion (soft […]