Nearly 20 years after after the 9/11 attacks on the US, while terrorism is not the issue it was in 2001, it still has significant potential to influence what could yet be a cliffhanger presidential election. The continued scope for politicization of the issue became evident last week, when one of Osama bin Laden’s nieces, a Trump supporter, said only the president could keep the US safe from another 9/11. Trump, who regularly claims one of the triumphs of his presidency is the elimination of Daesh territory by “carpet bombing it into oblivion,” favors a continued hard line reminiscent of the administration of George W. Bush. But it is increasingly clear that there is a key weakness in this approach; it has been hyper-militarized, dominated by counter terrorism and security, while soft-power instruments such as public diplomacy have been underused. To be sure, even this unbalanced strategy has secured successes, such as the unseating of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but its overwhelming emphasis on hard power has fueled significant controversy andalienated many across the world. What changes might Democratic candidate Joe Biden bring were he to win in November? Aside from his campaign pronouncements, a good guide may be the period toward the end of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president. At that time, senior US policymakers had highlighted the need for a paradigm shift that might well have come to fruition in a Hillary Clinton presidency. In the 2016 presidential campaign, she championed a policy of “smart power,” re-orientating the balance between hard and soft power in favor of the latter. Clinton’s successor as Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, a close confidant of Biden’s from their long careers in the Senate, also called for a “shift in gears on to a path that will demand more from us … politically, economically, and socially … a truly comprehensive and long-term strategy to destroy terrorism’s very roots.” Kerry and many other Biden advisers believe there is desperate need for a turbo-charged US soft-power effort to win hearts and minds around the world, especially in Muslim-majority countries. The soft-power roadmap is relatively clear. It requires the US and international partners to give higher priority to activities such as public diplomacy, sustainable development, economic assistance, and exchange programmes. Andrew Hammond Obama tried, but the promise was never fulfilled. Despite his Cairo speech in 2009, in which he sought to reset US relations with Muslim-majority countries, there remain pockets of anti-Americanism that has only grown worse under Trump. In countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan, polls show that positive sentiment toward the US has fallen off a cliff in the past two decades. This is so important because the outcome of anti-terrorism efforts is related to a battle between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilization. Unless this is better recognized and addressed, and the soft-power elements of the campaign against terrorism dialled up significantly, the US-led international strategy will continue to face serious setbacks. The soft-power roadmap is relatively clear. It requires the US and international partners to give higher priority to activities such as public diplomacy, sustainable development, economic assistance, and exchange programmes. Biden has rightly noted that this is an expensive, demanding and complex generational project that government alone cannot achieve, which is why non-governmental players from the private sector, NGOs and faith communities are also key to success. It is the Cold War that perhaps provides the best analogy for what some in the Biden team believe is now needed in the campaign against terrorism. Just as the US struggle with the Soviet Union was won by a strategy of US-led international containment and cultural vigor, the challenges posed by the campaign against terrorism need a much smarter balance between hard and soft power, with resources to match. Numerous US officials have highlighted the mismatch between the Pentagon budget and those of other US international programs. Washington spends about 500 times more on its military than it does collectively on international broadcasting and exchanges that proved so successful during the Cold War. Of course, a holistic international plan to tackle violent extremism will inevitably have a military and counter-terrorism component, but soft power needs to be a bigger part of the mix. It is therefore likely that a Biden-led administration will make moves to address this Achilles’ heel in the campaign against terrorism. However, even if he turbo charges this agenda, success will require sustained commitment by his successors in the White House. Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view