India’s Soft Power and Pakistan’s Hard Power Policy in Afghanistan

The strategic importance of Afghanistan has increased since 2001 for both India and Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan are in pursuit of gaining influence in Afghanistan through the use of soft power and hard power respectively as a foreign policy tool. Soft power is associated with intangible power resources such as culture, ideology and institutions. In contrast, hard power is usually associated with tangible resources like military and economic strength. India has been able to make an impact and generate goodwill by spending billions, mostly on infrastructure to help turn Afghanistan into a modern state. On the other hand, Pakistan has used hard power in Afghanistan in order to achieve its objectives. The focus of this paper is to have a comparative study of India’s soft power and Pakistan’s hard power in Afghanistan since 2001.