Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Matthew Fraser has written a humorous, scholarly page-turner that’s as
informative as it is easy to read. His thesis, taken from Harvard
Professor Joseph Nye, is that soft power strengthens U.S. global
hegemony as effectively as military power, is more effective in the long
run, and much less expensive.

Fraser makes a convincing case. Students who study in the United States
absorb American values. U.S. governments have actively promoted the film
industry in other countries, and Hollywood informs people from other
countries about the United States and persuades them to identify with
it. Charlie Chaplin convinced the world that Hitler and Mussolini were
evil, and Cold War movies reinforced the perception that the U.S. cause
was more admirable than the Soviet. CNN provides the world with a U.S.
interpretation of the news. American music convinces many that a nation
with such wonderful entertainment cannot be entirely bad. Coca-Cola and
McDonald’s also encourage such positive thoughts.

Despite the book’s virtues, from a Canadian standpoint Fraser makes
certain statements that are debatable. One is that “Canada [is] the
most American nation outside the United States itself.” Arguably,
Australia is more American than Canada, despite the fact that its people
drive on the left. Maclean’s magazine survives in Canada, but Newsweek
absorbed the Australian equivalent, The Bulletin, two decades ago. The
CBC is distinctly Canadian, as to a lesser extent is CTV, but most
Australian television stations are clones of U.S. networks. Australia
has participated in more of America’s recent wars—most noticeably
Vietnam and Iraq—than has Canada. On page 43, Fraser says that
Canada’s “English-speaking citizens are generally indistinguishable
from Americans.” This may be true of Americans who live in Minnesota,
New York, or Washington State, but it is hardly the case with Americans
who live in the former slave states. These have provided six of the
seven U.S. presidents who have held office since 1945 and occupied the
White House for all but 27 of those years. On the positive side, Fraser
explains the U.S. takeover of the Canadian film industry.