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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

JEFFERSON ON SOFT POWER: BEHIND OBAMA’S CAIRO QUOTE
JUN 12, 2009 - 3:18PM PST
Posted by Nicholas J. Cull
All posts by this author

Like many great orators President Obama knows how to quote scripture to maximum impact. His Cairo speech included passages from the Holy Koran, which his audience applauded. His conclusion also mustered words from the Talmud and a final quote from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount – "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God" which received no less applause. But some of his scriptures are those of America’s Civic Religion, as with his allusion to Tom Paine’s first issue of The Crisis in his inaugural address: "Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]." The Cairo speech also included a quote from a hero of America’s past: Thomas Jefferson. It went like this: Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." Jefferson had already been introduced in the speech as the ‘founding father’ who kept a Koran in his library, the volume upon which Muslim-American Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) took his oath of office. The quote gave the weight of history to Obama’s profession of the now familiar ‘smart power’ approach. It all made for one more effective moment in a remarkable speech. But the president’s deft quotation belies its relative obscurity. He may be able to recall those words, but that quote has not been a part of the discourse around soft power or smart power. Even the father of the term, Joseph Nye, confirmed -- when I asked -- that the quote was new to him. Curious, I set off to track it down. I began with the digitized version of the Thomas Jefferson papers available through that great Jeffersonian institution, the Library of Congress. Was it the inaugural address? The farewell? Thirty second later I had my answer. The quote came from one of the minor epistles of American holy writ: a letter from Jefferson’s correspondence with the largely forgotten Scottish-born Pennsylvanian Thomas Leiper (1845-1825), whose distinctions include his building the first American railway. The two men wrote to each other on political issues for thirty four years. Jefferson penned the quoted letter on 12 June 1815. The context of Jefferson’s remark was the astonishing news that Napoleon Bonaparte had escaped from his exile on the island of Elba, landed in France and marched on Paris, raising a new army as he went. The Bourbon King, Louis XVIII had fled and Napoleon was Emperor once more. In a letter in April 1815,…... FULL TEXT
 
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Read Comments:

Shawn Powers on June 12, 2009 @ 6:23 pm:
Terrific post, Nick. Fascinating research. For an added twist the drones-Pakistan plot, take a look at the front page of today's NYT: "American officials say they are seeing the first evidence that dozens of fighters with Al Qaeda, and a small handful of the terrorist group's leaders, are moving to Somalia and Yemen from their principal haven in Pakistan's tribal areas...Some aides to President Obama attribute the moves to pressure from intensified drone attacks against Qaeda operatives in Pakistan." What looks like a "win" in Pakistan could very well be a much larger loss for international security. Sigh.

ali on December 4, 2009 @ 10:39 pm:
it was really a pleasure reading your research on the context of original quote by Thomas Jefferson. more insightful was the use of Pakistani context, aptly highlighting practical application of what is said and what is done on ground. yes, a state's use of hard power is fraught with dire implications. we are unfortunately paying the price for it.
regards

Diana on July 4, 2010 @ 7:34 am:
Thanks for sharing the history behind the quote. A quote is not much without its context.

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