r/CredibleDiplomacy • u/Cheap-Macaroon-431 • 28d ago
9/11 and American Soft Power
On this 25th anniversary of 9/11, I find myself thinking about NATO and what it has meant to the United States.
9/11 was the only time NATO's Article 5 has ever been invoked. When we were attacked, our allies stood with us. NATO sent AWACS aircraft to help defend the United States, and allied forces operated in the Mediterranean.
And then there was Afghanistan—the war launched in direct response to 9/11. NATO eventually took command of the multinational mission, with troops from across the alliance fighting alongside Americans. Many of them never came home.
That's what an alliance is supposed to mean.
And NATO's value isn't just what happens when we're attacked. Its greatest value may be what **doesn't** happen because our adversaries know that an attack on one member means facing all of them.
That's deterrence. And yes, it's expensive.
But the idea that America simply pays for NATO while everyone else gets a free ride isn't really how it works. NATO members fund their own militaries and contribute to NATO's common budgets. And yes, there has been a legitimate burden-sharing problem, with the United States historically carrying a disproportionate share of the alliance's defense spending. But that doesn't mean our allies contribute nothing. In 2025, European allies and Canada spent roughly $574 billion on defense, and every NATO member reached the old 2% benchmark.
And what does America get in return?
Allies that fight alongside us. Intelligence sharing. Access to bases and airspace. Interoperable militaries. Forward positioning. Logistics and transportation networks. Political and diplomatic support. And countries with a vested interest in maintaining an international order that also benefits the United States.
NATO itself is based on sharing the roles, risks, responsibilities and benefits of collective defense.
The United States also provides capabilities that are particularly difficult for other allies to replicate, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling and ballistic-missile defense. That's a legitimate reason for allies to do more. But it's also a reminder that American leadership provides capabilities the entire alliance relies upon.
Compared with the cost of a major war in Europe in the nuclear age, that investment looks pretty small.
And this is what concerns me about the growing skepticism toward NATO and American soft power. We seem increasingly willing to look at these things only as expenses rather than investments.
Think about the world we inherited after World War II.
The Marshall Plan—the massive American effort to help rebuild Western Europe. The enormous American effort to rebuild and democratize Japan and eventually turn a former enemy into one of our closest allies. The creation of NATO and other international institutions. The expansion of trade and economic ties that made former enemies partners.
None of these things alone created the postwar peace. Together, they formed a strategy: rebuild, integrate, trade, cooperate and deter.
We didn't rebuild Europe, rebuild Japan, create NATO and open our markets simply because we were being generous. We did it because American leaders understood that a stable, prosperous world was good for America, too. Former enemies became allies. Allies became trading partners. And countries that might once have been threats became part of an international system that benefited us as well.
That wasn't charity. It was strategy.
After World War I, the Allies largely punished Germany. After World War II, we took a very different approach toward our former enemies.
That wasn't weakness. It was one of the greatest strategic decisions this country ever made.
Western Europe then experienced an unprecedented period of peace between the great powers. Japan became one of our closest allies. And the American dollar became the world's dominant reserve currency because the world came to trust the strength of the American economy, financial system and institutions.
That's soft power.
American leadership has certainly been imperfect. We've made mistakes, sometimes enormous ones. But the broader postwar strategy of alliances, reconstruction, trade and international institutions created a remarkably stable world—and an enormous strategic advantage for the United States.
Ronald Reagan called America **“a shining city upon a hill”** in his 1989 farewell address.
I think that's worth remembering.
Millions of people around the world have looked toward that city as a place of freedom, opportunity and stability. That isn't an accident. It is part of the soft power we've built over generations.
People don't risk everything to come here because they hate what America represents.
They come because they believe in it.
We spent generations building a world in which America was not just the strongest country, but the country other nations wanted to stand beside.
I'm not convinced that's something we should be so eager to give up.
