By Dominic Odipo

About two weeks ago, the US government announced that it would ban a number of powerful and influential Kenyans from setting foot on American soil because of their anti-reform record.

Seemingly outraged, Foreign Minister Moses Wetang’ula came out guns blazing.

The US, especially Assistant Secretary Johnnie Carson and Ambassador Michael Ranneberger, were overstepping some very well-defined diplomatic boundaries, he thundered. Accordingly, the Kenyan Government reserved the right to reciprocate, he threatened.

The other day, the US Government announced that it had duly banned Attorney General Amos Wako from stepping on American soil for life.

Naturally, we all cocked our heads to hear what immediate retaliatory action Wetang’ula was going to take. As expected, nothing happened. Wako, the long-serving AG, has apparently been left to fight his war with the Americans alone.

Why has Wetang’ula suddenly gone quiet? We don’t know for sure but there could be a very good reason.

The Foreign Minister, a trained lawyer and therefore a learned man, may have since come across and perused Prof Joseph Nye’s The Powers to Lead, a book published last year by Oxford University Press.

Nye, a former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the US, is best known for his promotion of the idea of "soft power" which relies on influence and persuasion, instead of "hard power" based on force and coercion.

In The Powers to Lead, which has reportedly been read by most of the top cream of the Obama administration, including the President himself and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Prof Nye proposes a new approach to political and corporate leadership.

Acknowledging that the historical emphasis on hard power has become outdated and is often ineffective, Nye recommends a judicious combination of both hard and soft power, which he calls "smart power".

Desired outcomes

Smart power entails and includes identification, selection and application of new and old power components, which are collectively designed to achieve certain, desired political outcomes. It also entails the selection of particular targets in a given political population for specific or individual action.

For example, if in the past the American Government would have been inclined to punish the entire Kenyan Government for its anti-reformist policies, it should now try to identify the specific individuals within the political establishment whom it considers anti-reformist and subject them to specific, individual sanctions while continuing to do business with the others.

In other words, use hard power with specific individuals within the Kenyan Government but employ soft power on those within the same government with which the US Government has no bone to pick.

In this manner, only those whom the US Government has problems with, whatever these might be, will suffer the consequences of its wrath, not the entire ruling establishment or Kenyan people as a whole.

The intelligent use of smart power can easily be demonstrated by the use of the smart bomb. If you can establish that there is a bunch of terrorists operating from a specific building in Nairobi, you employ a bomb or other explosive device that will demolish only that building.

You do not explode a nuclear bomb over Nairobi and destroy the entire city.

There is no force more powerful than an idea whose time has come, at least that was what the late British economist, John Maynard Keynes, believed.

A lot of other intelligent men who lived with Keynes in the 20th Century came to agree with him, at least on that particular point. Not even the greatest and most powerful armies can stop an idea whose time has come.

Most of the evidence around us now seems to indicate that the time for the idea of smart power has arrived.

This idea, courtesy of Prof Nye, a one-time chairman of the American National Intelligence Council, appears to have captured the attention of most of the top brass of the Obama administration and could everyday be capturing even more beyond the American governing establishment.

no options left

What does this mean for us here in Kenya and, especially, for Foreign Minister Wetang’ula and Attorney General Amos Wako? For us Kenyans, it means that not all of us will henceforth suffer for those mistakes or misfortunes that can clearly be traced to specific individuals in or out of government.

For Wetang’ula, it means he has virtually no options left because he is up against effectively the entire American Government, not just Carson or Ranneberger. For Wako, the message is very stark indeed.

This is not a simple matter of defamation, libel or slander. Wako is trying to fight an idea whose time appears to have come and without even the humblest of armies on his side.

As history shows, he cannot win. But since he appears to have so much legal expertise at his disposal, let him try and prove Keynes wrong.

—The writer (dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk) is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.