Tragedy or Irony: Geopolitical Grand Narratives, Religious Outreach, and US Soft Power

This chapter presents evidence of religious soft power’s impact in US foreign policy in two time periods. The first is the early Cold War, when the United States was trying to establish its international leadership and form a global coalition against the Soviet Union. The second is the post–Cold War era, when the United States has struggled against violent Islamist nonstate actors—like al-Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS—while also trying to define the nature of the international order. There are major differences between these periods, such as the specificity of US initiatives under different presidential administrations, but both indicate the presence and impact of religious soft power in American foreign policy.