COMMENTARIES

Commentaries may be discussed with Professor Emeritus Naren Chitty AM <naren.chitty@mq.edu.au>. In order to make commentaries easily readable on mobile telephones, they need to have a word limit of 750. Paragraphs should be limited to 75 words.

COMMENTARY LIST

• 28 Jan 2021.    Joseph S. Nye Jr. America's  abiding values and soft power.
• 01 May 2021.  Naren Chitty AM.  Soft [power] and obelisks: The eyes have it.
• 16 Sep 2022,   Hendrick Ohnesorge.. Soft power and the return of history,
• 09 Dec 2022,   Murray Green. Back to the future or a new future: Australia's media initiatives in the Pacific and  diplomacy  of attraction, collaboration and influence,
• 24 Feb 2023,   HwaJung Kim. Ideological Vacuum, Value Clashes, and Soft Power.
• 02  Apr 2023.  Jocelyn Chey,AM. The Ethnic Soft Power Effect: Reflections on Australia-China Relations
• 01  Jun 2023    Irene  Wu. Goal!  Soft Power at the Women’s World Cup for Soccer ANZ 2023
• 15  Feb 2024   Craig Hayden. The Disintegration of  Power
• 12  June 2024  Maurice Newman. Sweet and Sour Power
  .

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

COMMENTARIES

in reverse  order of the list above

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

SWEET AND SOUR POWER

MAURICE NEWMAN AC

The sweet-and-sour relationship between the world’s two largest economies is a testbed for soft power theories. The two states espouse political values that do not mix well.  Despite this China is able to influence international organizations to accept its position on a number of issues to which the West takes exception. It does this without firing a gun. So, it is useful to reflect on China’s soft power successes as we enter a new season of toasts and roasts between the US and China.

China’s massive charm offensive has been delivered through developing soft power resources. It invested heavily in strategic infrastructure abroad, recruited foreign nationals to Chinese company boards and government bodies and, at times, resorted to inducement – a practice excluded by Nye from soft power.

Indeed, there is no exponent of soft power, as effective as the Peoples Republic of China. It has been successful in gaining tremendous influence in the United Nations over a few decades. It has achieved more bang for its buck than the West. It contributes a mere 12 percent of the regular UN budget, when Western democracies contribute well over 50 percent of the total. Joseph Nye refers to this in his book, “The rise of China’s soft power”. Demonstrating this success, Beijing now leads four of the 15 UN specialised agencies, compared to Washington’s two. Chinese deputies are present in nine of those agencies.

China’s soft power persuasion was so effective that senior executives of international organizations have been more than supportive. This is presumably viewed negatively in some western countries and positively in China and some developing countries. Chinese diplomats would have been gratified to see, as reported in an independent investigation, that World Bank’s leaders, including the then Chief Executive, Kristalina Georgieva, leant on staff to boost China's position in the bank's “Doing Business 2018” report. The report states further that The World Bank even changed data methodology lifting China up seven places. Georgieva’s personal soft power was not scarred. She kept her new job as head of the International Monetary Fund and the caravan moved on.

Virtue and virtuosity came into play as sweet and sour soft power factors in the Covid pandemic. Some saw China as being virtuosic in its containment of the virus in Wuhan. Others questioned China’s virtuosity in allowing its spread in the first place. Some felt the lockdowns and prickliness about reviews to be lacking in virtue. Despite these mixed reactions China’s soft power virtuosity in UN organizations was not afflicted. Head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned against imposing travel or trade restrictions on China in contradiction to the views of western states. He was criticized in the West for inventing the term COVID-19 “to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatising”. What better soft power is there than when a UN Health chief says “China has bought the world time”. “China’s speed, China’s scale and China’s efficiency …. is the advantage of China’s system”.

Since it gained entry to the World Trade Organisation, Beijing has pursued its own state-led, non-market, mercantilist approach which the West argues regularly fails to comply with the Protocols of Accession. The West, with political and economic virtue templates that are incompatible with those of China, views Chinese trade policy as opaque.

It must be recognised that China’s extraordinary international authority has been achieved without a single shot being fired. Rather, the Chinese international strategy has been patient and targeted. It has had demonstrably ‘China first” objectives and, has targeted a reliable voting block. If Soft Power is about hearts and minds, in the UN it is also about hands – about voting. The reliable voting block includes an assortment of states that have benefited from Chinese loans, participants in the Belt and Road Initiative and many likeminded nations which admire China’s growth and have themselves been criticized by the West for their human rights records.

The sour side of Chinese soft power has been associated with growing disenchantment as borrowers come to grips with their debts, and a new era of “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Despite all, the Chinese continue to demonstrate how soft power can expertly co-opt authority without the need for coercion. If coercion later becomes necessary, the target has already been primed.

Maurice Newman AC

Australian businessman. Former Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation;  Former Chair of the Board of the Australian Stock Exchange;  Member of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council (September 2013 to September 2015)

12 June  2024

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

THE DISINTEGRATION OF POWER

CRAIG HAYDEN Ph.D.

Can soft power come undone? Recent comments by former President Trump about the value of NATO raises concerns over abandoning the ties that have bound the U.S. to its allies, partners, and a beneficial international system (1).   Leaving aside the question of whether soft power works in the way Joseph Nye has elaborated, the steady decline in positive opinion of the US during the Trump administration suggests the question is not simply academic. Global perceptions of the U.S. handling of the COVID pandemic and the spectacle of its divisive politics may have shaken the foundations of U.S. soft power (2). While U.S. leadership has since attempted to restate its commitment to shared democratic values against the growing influence of countries like China, the durability of U.S. soft power seems more tenuous. And the Biden administration's unwavering support of Israel despite mounting civilian casualties in Gaza has served to isolate the U.S. further (3).  Despite these trends, it is not clear that a decline in popular opinion is the real problem with a breakdown of soft power.

“Disintegration” here describes the uncoupling of values, ideals, and legitimacy in Nye’s vision of soft power. They function as power in so far as there is mutual affirmation that they are shared among countries. The aftermath of comments made by former President Trump on February 10, 2024 that question NATO’s worth and show deference to Russian aggression is clearly uncharted territory. It is unlikely that the remarks of one person (who is not currently the President of the United States) will undermine the weight of history that supports U.S. soft power. But soft power is not simply reflected in public opinion polls, sentiment analysis, or trending news media framing.  If these remarks increasingly stand in as the prevailing U.S. political will towards its international engagements, then it is reasonable to assume that soft power is diminished if U.S. policy aims to leverage its soft power to solidify commitment to democratic solidarity, human rights, and the rule of law.

An alternative perspective might be: so what? It is difficult to isolate soft power as the contributing factor to foreign policy success. Perhaps what matters more is securing the material security interests of the United States, rather than bank on the downstream benefits of allies and partners sharing U.S. interests and worldviews. It may be more difficult for soft power to defend itself from narrow conceptions of realist foreign policy, when it is unclear how soft power contributes to national security’s bottom line (4). Attraction alone is not a guarantor of national security.

What is harder to measure, however, are the ways in which U.S. foreign policy is impeded by lost opportunities. Alienating allies and retreating from agreements invites countries to consider the U.S. as unreliable at best, if not duplicitous in its self-interest. When faced with such uncertainty, states seek guarantees elsewhere. In the interim, how might we measure the loss of influence, when U.S. diplomats simply don’t get the call for a potential commercial deal that goes to China? Or a renegotiated energy agreement that ends up with a Russian contractor?  It is difficult to measure what was never offered.

The rhetorical threats to NATO risk the symbolic dismantling of goodwill and the benefit of the doubt accrued over NATO’s history. A significant feature of NATO is the elevation of a shared identity around security. U.S. support of NATO not only affirms collective security, but the space it creates for its member states to see the world in similar ways - a shared identity around a commitment to particular values and order. A NATO unraveled by states seeking better security guarantees through hedging and accommodation of revisionist powers does not mean the inevitable triumph of a tragic realism, but the willful abandonment of community and ideals. The hollowing out of NATO would be tragic in the sense that it is avoidable.

Remarks about allowing Russia to invade Europe unless NATO allies pay more for their security not only fundamentally misreads NATO as a security protection racket (5), it signals a break from soft power attraction. But not necessarily in the way Nye views the term. Irene Wu argued that soft power is best visible in actions that demonstrate a form of shared identity, citing social capital as the measure of power (6). Building on this insight, soft power may be sustained by what rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke termed identification (7). Rather than persuasion, soft power as “identification” captures how actions and words extend the invitation to a shared future of interests and values, rather than unvarnished transactionalism. Attraction is not a popularity contest, but reflects the cultivation of a common perspective that can overcome the problem of estrangement (8). If we consider attraction as a component of identification, the vulnerabilities of soft power and what can be lost become clearer. The in-group vs out-group lines are drawn into sharp relief. The disintegration of soft power is not a decline of popularity, but the demarcation of alienation and isolation. As U.S. material influence faces global competition abroad, soft power may well be a crucial bulwark against an uncertain future.

Craig Hayden Ph.D.

Associate Professor of strategic Studies, Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University

15 February 2024

__________________

Endnotes

1. Fitzgerald, James. February 11, 2024 “Trump says he would 'encourage' Russia to attack Nato allies who do not pay their bills” BBC News. (accessed February 13, 2023). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68266447
2. Crowley, Michael. Dec 22, 2023. “A World Leader on Ukraine, the U.S. is now isolated over Gaza” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza-ukraine.html (accessed February 13, 2024).
3. Kearn, David. 2022. “The crisis of American soft power” Journal of Political Power, 15(3), 397-414, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2022.2127277
4. Seymor, Margaret. Sept 14, 2020. “The Problem with Soft Power.” Foreign Policy Research Institute. Washington DC. https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/09/the-problem-with-soft-power/ (accessed February 12, 2024).
5. Bouie, Jamelle (February 13, 2024). “Trump is losing it” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/opinion/trump-campaign-biden-aging.html (accessed February 13, 2024).
6. Wu, Irene. 2018. “Soft Power amid great power competition” Wilson Center Asia Program. Washington D.C.
7. Burke, Kenneth. 1969 A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California Press.
8. For a review of “estrangement” in diplomacy studies, see Sharp, Paul. 2009 Diplomatic Theory of International Relations. Cambridge University Press.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

GOAL!  SOFT POWER AT THE WOMENS' WORLD CUP FOR SOCCER ANZ 2023

IRENE S. WU PH.D.

The first time it entered my mind that it might be fun to take up running was after watching a Women’s World Cup soccer match at RFK stadium in Washington, D.C.  It was 1999. The impulse was fleeting, I soon returned to the libraries that are my natural habitat.

Few windows on the world are as entertaining as these mega international sports tournaments.   Soon, Australia and New Zealand are set to co-host the Women’s World Cup for football. In the run up to the recent Men’s World Cup in 2021, a lot of commentary focused soft power benefits – and risks – to the Qatari hosts.  What are the soft power implications for Australia and New Zealand, then?

While I agree hosts are important, I think the focus is too narrow. The global exposure benefits national teams as well.  Beyond the teams, the fans themselves are also not to be underestimated; they can also gain fame for their national character.  Who cannot be impressed by Japanese fans who leave stadiums clean?[i] Hosts, teams, and fans, can influence their countries’ image – and, thereby, their soft power – in the world.

Who are the nations of the Women’s World Cup?  There have been nine tournaments from 1991 to 2023. Europe, Americas, and Asia have each hosted three tournaments.  Seven countries have played host; China and the US each hosted twice. All hosts, marked with their dates across the top two rows from 1991 to 2023, are to be found at Womens’ World Cup Hosts and Teams.

The Women’s World Cup’s underdog struggles give the host, teams, and fans a special cache.  Saudi Arabia’s offer to sponsor the 2023 tournament was rejected by FIFA by popular demand in light of the Saudi women’s limited freedoms in their own country.[ii] There are countless stories of teams fighting for fairness, whether parity with men’s facilities, equality of pay, or just for the freedom to play.  The fans can be underdogs, too.  In Iran, a ban on women in the stands from 1979 was lifted only in 2019 for a men’s FIFA qualifying match.[iii] For women fans of sport, just walking through front gate of the arena can be a victory. For those of us who have similar fights in our lives, we see ourselves in these teams.  They are like us, and we root for them.  Liberté, égalité, sororité.

Measuring by the Soft Power Rubric, Australia ranks 12^th in the world and New Zealand ranks 33^rd, with the most recent data from 2019.  The Soft Power Rubric measured a country’s soft power influence by considering how many foreigners act on their attraction to a country.  For example, how many people travel to that country, enroll in university there, or immigrate there?[iv] For both countries, it is the large number of foreign students that raises their rank compared to other countries.  In 2019 Australia ranked 33^rd in largest number of foreign visitors, 8^th in immigrant population, and 2^nd in the world in number of foreign students, New Zealand ranked 50^th in largest number of foreign visitors, 29^th in immigrants, and 18^th in foreign students.

Soft power resides in the minds of the foreigners a country is trying to influence.  Offering a life that people in other countries aspire to; an education they think will prepare them for the future; or just a holiday that will produce memories for a lifetime – these are the things that attract foreigners to a country. It is international relations at a personal level.  Also, decisions made for immigration, education, and tourism policy, often with domestic goals in mind, have long term foreign policy implications.

The Women’s World Cup, like other mega international tournaments shows nations in direct comparison to one another.  Soon, we will add one more layer to our perspective on other countries, our experience of the 2023 Women’s World Cup – the hosts, the teams, and the fans.

Irene S. Wu, Ph.D.

Adjunct Professor, Communications, Culture & Technology Program, Georgetown University.

01 June 2023

THE ETHNIC SOFT POWER EFFECT: REFLECTIONS ON AUSTRALIA-CHINA RELATIONS

JOCELYN CHEY

Chinese Australians have played a very significant role in Australia-China relations, although this has been largely ignored by commentators. Their contribution to soft power engagement in this bilateral relationship suggests that other ethnic groups can also play a greater role in cultural and public diplomacy.

Australia’s cultural exchanges with China flourished over many years, although suspended since 2020 during the pandemic and currently inactive due to a downturn in political relations.  At the same time, the ethnic Chinese Australian community has grown dramatically and is now estimated to constitute five percent of the total population.

Australia prides itself on its multicultural society.  The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade states that it represents this in its international engagement, although the actual deployment of talent and programming of events do not fully reflect this ambition.

One example of the positive effect of Chinese Australian participation in cultural exchanges is the 2018 tour of four Chinese cities by the Queensland Ballet under the artistic direction of Li Cunxin.  Li, a ballet dancer, grew up in China, defected to the USA, married an Australian dancer and then moved to Australia, where he continued his ballet career.

Putting aside concerns about the legality of his departure from China, this was Li’s first return visit to his native land after four decades. Publicity for the tour did not highlight Li, but his autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer had been translated into Chinese, and a movie based on the book was available on Netflix.

The Queensland Ballet had previously visited China in 2014, but that tour had nothing like the success achieved in 2018.  The soft power effect was all the more remarkable because bilateral relations were already on a steep downwards trend, following widespread accusations in Australia of China seeking to exert undue influence on public life.

The Queensland Ballet’s 2019 annual report notes,

“The tour yielded extraordinary outcomes including highly visible and positive media coverage, overwhelmingly positive audience feedback, strengthened cultural diplomatic links with the Queensland and Australian governments, and the strengthening of business and cultural relations between Australia and China.”

When the Australian government has conscripted local ethnic Chinese talent and featured artists, writers, or performers with ethnic Chinese background in their cultural programs in China, they have had great impact. Local media have talked up the events and audiences have responded with enthusiasm.  This can be partly credited to nationalistic pride that “one of our own” has made his or her mark internationally, but this does not fully explain the reaction.

The ethnic phenomenon is not unique to China.  The Australian press hypes the achievements of home-grown talent in international sports or cultural settings such as the Hollywood film industry. These stories feed nascent nationalistic pride.

Considered from the point of view of the sending country, the Queensland Ballet story reveals the advantage of telling a story of multiculturalism. Considered from the personal angle, Li Cunxin had to resolve his identity and agree to represent Australia in China, a country with which he maintained a complicated emotional attachment.

A second instance of Chinese Australians’ “power of attraction” is a visit to China by the renowned photographer William Yang.  Launching a recent exhibition of his work at Western Sydney University, Yang spoke about his visit to the BaoGang Steel Works outside Shanghai. The local interpreter told him, “The people love your work”, to which he replied, saying that was just because he was Chinese.  The interpreter laughingly agreed that was the case.

William Yang was born in Australia and never learned to speak Chinese.  His basic identity is Australian, and he speaks of “coming out as Chinese” just as he “came out” as gay.  His positive reception at BaoGang was due to his ethnicity, not his art or his ability to communicate.

Language is, however, a powerful soft power tool.  I can testify to that as a fluent speaker of Chinese. For example, as Director of the China Branch of the former International Wool Secretariat in the late 1980s, I was frequently called on to appear on Shanghai television.  I am not telegenic, and even though the Woolmark brand was famous in China, I know that I was invited as a “talking monkey” – the spectacle of a foreigner who spoke Chinese.

I accepted because this helped to promote the qualities of wool from Australia and other IWS member countries, and the campaign was remarkably successful.

I have given three examples of how language and ethnicity can contribute to soft power activities in China.  This is undoubtedly also true in other international situations.

Jocelyn Chey AM

is Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney and Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University and UTS.  Her career with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spanned thirty years from the 1970s to 90s, including two postings in Beijing and as Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau 1992-5.  She was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) in 2009.

02 April 2023

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

IDEOLOGICAL VACUUM, VALUE CLASHES, AND SOFT POWER

HWAJUNG KIM

Soft power is the power of attraction “engendered” by a state-nation,[i] based on three sources (culture, political values, and politics), to get the outcomes one wants, which has evolved over time since Joseph Nye (1990) coined the term three decades ago by taking a “liberal realist” approach to power conceptions.[ii]

The development of “soft power” concept both in academia and practice reflects the global consciousness of American power, representing democratic values and peace and rules-based order at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, putting an ending mark to the Cold War. Soft power enables not only liberal but also illiberal countries to actively implement and execute soft power conversion strategies, getting from resources to behavior outcomes, in foreign affairs to influence others positively.

The distinction between soft power as “attraction-based intended influence” and soft [power] as “attraction-based unintended influence” succinctly explains what is achieved through soft power strategies and what is not, with an emphasis on the eye of the beholder.[iii] This evolving concept of soft power and soft [power] prompted me to consider the importance of emotional beliefs (such as trust, nationalism, justice, and credibility) in the construction of an idea, value, ideology, identity, and even rational choice and behaviors because emotions are not irrational force constituting and strengthening a belief.[iv] Emotional dimensions of soft power allow us to explore two recent phenomena: ideological vacuum and value clashes.

As Inglehart argued, norms and value changes bring about cultural change, and consequently, societal changes follow.[v] Russia and other ex-communist countries experienced the collapse of the communist belief system, so-called ideological vacuum occurred during the 1990s, but cultural innovation, meaning transition toward democracy, did not occur. Instead, the ideological vacuum has accelerated hard power and hard [power] strategies of illiberal countries like China and Russia due to path-dependence on historical heritage and trembling existential security—comprised of economic and physical capabilities to survive. This is because soft power and soft [power] exerted by authoritarian countries in the 21st century are perceived as false consciousness by the global public, which contrasts sharply with the general views on American soft power in the 20th century.

Value clashes, one of the two negative consequences of soft power effectiveness along with propaganda, defined by my previous study,[vi] between illiberal countries and the global public (the eye of the beholder), will be likely to intensify tensions, conflicts, and wars as value clashes widen the gap between different belief systems, such as Russian geopolitical calculation, the Chinese way of democracy with the Belt and Road Initiative, or the authoritarian reflex, emerging in the most advanced Western democracies, as shown in such cases as Brexit, France’s National Front, and Donald Trump’s winning the presidential election in the mid-2010s. These xenophobic populist authoritarian movements have grown to the point where populism and propaganda predominate.

Nonetheless, the global public is keen to maintain a post-materialist’s outlook, such as enhanced freedom of expression, freedom to travel, and free choice in politics, since they experienced the longest period of peace after WWⅡ under the neoliberal mechanism of global governance—the United Nations. More egalitarian social norms gain more attention than ever before. Therefore, value clashes can be mitigated by the rules-based world order because soft power and soft [power] yielded by the US and its allies, such as the AUKUS, are positively received by the global public as reconciliation or leadership, the positive consequences of soft power effectiveness.[vii]

It has been a year since Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The world has noticed the cooperation between the EU and NATO Alliance, with the US taking the leading role, and those neutral countries, such as Finland and Sweden, have expressed their willingness to join the NATO Alliance to protect their territorial integrity and sovereignty by upholding liberal values and norms. Emotional beliefs matter here. While ideological vacuum and value clashes increase the risk of conflicts, emotional beliefs in liberal values strengthen the peacekeeping cooperation mechanism of democratic international organizations. Universal values must be considered when constructing soft power and soft [power].

HwaJung Kim

serves as Research Professor, having been selected in track-A by the National Research Foundation of the Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea, in mid-2021, at the Institute for International Area Studies, Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, where she had joined as Invited Professor (2020–2021) after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Seoul National University awarded by the National Research Foundation (2017–2019).

24 Feb 2023

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

BACK TO THE FUTURE OR A NEW FUTURE?

Australia’s media initiatives in the Pacific and the diplomacy of attraction, collaboration and influence

MURRAY GREEN

Australia has several often disconnected projects in media engagement with the 25 nations and associated territories of the Pacific. Our neighbours and neighbourhood. There is a legacy and a future but how should this be both reviewed and anticipated?

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has marked 80 years of Radio Australia broadcasting to Asia and the Pacific and some 30 years of the various iterations of what now is ABC Australia television. The ABC has a Pacific reporter in Port Moresby. Natalie Whiting provides a rare Australian perspective from within the region and supported by an Asia Pacific News Room, based in Melbourne. The ABC has most successfully led the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) with government development aid money to build the capacity of Pacific media content makers.

Free TV Australia, the commercial television industry group, also with federal government support, facilitates PacificAus TV, making available content such as MasterChef, Sixty Minutes and the AFL to local Pacific broadcasters. News Corporation owns and operates Papua New Guinea’s Post Courier and Telstra now owns, with Australian federal government support, Pacific wide telecommunications provider and television broadcaster, Digicel.

There are two new contributions that cause us to take a deeper breath and reflect more consequentially about Australia’s media engagement with Pacific, and what we have done and what we should do, and the role and purpose of Australian government support.

The history of Radio Australia is succinctly and authoritatively outlined by Phil Kafcaloudes in Australia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story (ABC, 2022). The ebb and flow of political influence at times impacted on how the network fashioned its editorial priorities, particularly during times of crisis. This history is marked by expansion, contraction and attempts at redefinition of purpose and practice.

A forthcoming book from Geoff Heriot International Broadcasting and its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power (Anthem Press, March 2023) offers the promise of a fresh analytical perspective. In an abstract of the forthcoming content, the purpose and capacity of Radio Australia is scoped but from a more conceptual framework. Heriot scrutinises the role of the state and advocates international broadcasting being framed in terms of discursive power rather than soft power. Discursive power engages with disinformation and information warfare and has clarity about editorial standards, that were an issue for Radio Australia during times of international conflict. Heriot offers an alternative way of thinking about international broadcasting and the role of the state, with a proposed evaluative framework that includes consideration of strategy, and how it is expressed, as well as organisational design and operation. All this in the context of reviewing the understanding and expression of soft power, hard power and smart power.

The Abbott government pulled the funding for Australian international television, and the ABC even though bound by international broadcasting as a core Charter obligation, did not appear to meet the significant shortfall by reviewing other activities. The other seismic change was the shutdown of short-wave transmission of Radio Australia which impacted particularly on the non-urban areas of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. This apparent strategic misstep was reinforced when China Radio International took up the short wave frequencies. The latest Federal Budget has assigned funds to review whether short wave transmission should be reinstated for Radio Australia.

Going back to the future, however, is not a viable or durable option. The media markets have changed and morphed even in isolated villages, where locals now charge their smart phones by solar cells. Influence, as an important ingredient of statecraft, can now arguably best be pursued by collaboration. Claire Gorman, Head of ABC International Services, indicates signs of reversal of earlier cuts. ABC Radio Australia has moved to restore and build further its FM Pacific network. In August 2022 there were 13 transmitters in Pacific urban areas and ABC Australia television was available in 16 Pacific nations. This presence often depends on collaboration with local media companies. The next initiative should be to engage in local collaboration in content making.

Federal government funding will add to this international broadcasting effort by a further $8m for each of the next four years.

To be on the ground is one of the starting points of engaging in influence. This influence could be enhanced by ABC international content being produced and presented in the Pacific, with diverse Pacific faces and Pacific voices, adding to strong content in from Australian produced programs such as Pacific Beat, and Sistas Lets Talk.  Collaboration offers the opportunity to contribute to the diplomatic goal of attraction to Australia’s public and cultural values.

This is not back to the future but learning from the consequence of past policy cloudiness and anticipating a new future where clarity of purpose prevails, a purpose enabled by a commitment to collaboration in telling Pacific stories and experiences not just to the neighbourhood but from the neighbourhood. Now that’s a real step-up.

Murray Green

teaches in Cyber Law and Criminal Justice and Technology, at La Trobe and Swinburne Law Schools. He is a media development adviser and was formerly Director International at the ABC. He is an Honorary Professor at the Soft Power Analysis and Resource Centre at Macquarie University. He has a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) from the Melbourne Law School.

09 Dec 2022

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOFT POWER AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY

HENDRIK W. OHNESORGE

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOFT [POWER] AND OBELISKS: THE EYES HAVE IT

NAREN CHITTY

Five fields or disciplines were compounded between Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan - four were Lasswell’s, philosophy was Kaplan’s: communication studies; jurisprudence; philosophy; policy studies; psychology. Viewed through their compound disciplinary lens, soft power would be ‘attraction-based intended influence’. For Lasswell and Kaplan[i], intended influence is power. When one applies this lens to Joseph Nye’s[ii] three power modes - coercion, inducement, and attraction - they split into six modes. Three are intended forms of power. Three are unintended forms and therefore not classified as power.

‘Attraction-based unintended influence’ does not fit comfortably in the power category of Lasswell and Kaplan, hence my calling it soft [power] – ‘soft bracketed power’.[iii] Attraction-based unintended influence is after all a mouthful – even if the bracketing of power offers its own level of discomfort.

Hard power can be unintended too: ‘unintended coercion-based influence’ or ‘unintended inducement-based’ influence would be hard [power] when viewed through the compound lens of Lasswell and Kaplan.

Two examples of fungibility between hard power/hard [power] and soft [power]/soft power, across time, are offered below. The first relates Egyptian monuments, such as pyramids and obelisks, to the present. The second links longitudinal hard power of monuments, in ‘woke’ eyes, in the 2020s.

Ideas for a George Washington memorial monument in DC started with a statue, grew to a pantheon crowned by an obelisk, and finally settled on today’s obelisk - the Washington Monument. To ancient Egyptians, obelisks (tekhenu) were petrified rays of the deified sun. Pharaohs projected power across time through monuments, like pyramids – petrified hard power.  Before the Battle of the Pyramids (July 21, 1798) where he was victorious, Napoleon Bonaparte bivouacked by the Pyramid of Cheops at Giza. He was attracted by petrified hard power – here acting as soft [power] – casting a long shadow over the distant battlefield, even naming it.

Later the Luxor Obelisk, gifted to Bonaparte by Muhammad Ali Pasha, was installed in the middle of Place de la Concorde. The Place was a human abattoir during the French Revolution; it was then known as the Place de Revolution. Here the National Razor of hard power was wielded by people disgruntled by the French monarchy. Prior to the Revolution (and during the brief Restoration) it was a symbol of monarchical power - the Place Louis XV.

The French Revolution gave us the ‘terrors’; and the Rights of Man – universal values invested with lasting soft power. Today the Luxor Obelisk and the Place de la Concorde represent petrified power/[power] - hard and soft. It has a soft [power] effect insofar as guillotine-wielding revolutionaries may not have intended it to be a place of attraction. When Paris, today, draws the Place de la Concorde into tourism promotion strategies, longitudinal soft [power] is unbracketed - converted into a soft power resource.

Recently demonstrators in Washington DC and elsewhere in the United States tore down monuments, because they honoured slave-owners. A wave of dismantling was prompted after the killing of George Floyd – the deplorable enactment of this hard power being witnessed on television.  President Biden relates how, when he knelt before George Floyd’s daughter, to pick up something she had dropped, she said “Daddy changed the world!”

Indeed, he did.

The cruel hard power inflicted on Floyd had hard [power] effects on protestors and communities across the world. Protestors’ sentiments had soft [power]  effects across the world. When follow-up protests were organized –soft [power] was converted to soft power. There were calls for dismantling monuments, considered offensive, across the West. The voices of dispossessed African Americans have often been invested in soft [power] across race and time. Among examples are African American forms of music - spirituals, jazz, rap. When these become hugely popular, industry commercializes and capitalizes.

Soft [power], like soft power, is in the eye of the beholder. What is attractive to one may not be so to another. Imperial nations vied with each other to install obelisks from Egypt in their capitals. The enormous obelisk at the centre of the Washington Mall outdoes them all, crafted with intent to symbolise strength and values of the first modern republican state. It has soft power, soft [power], hard power and hard [power] - depending on the eye of the beholder.

Naren Chitty AM                                                                                                                                                                                 

Inaugural Director of SPARC, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Languages & Literature., Macquarie Univ.

01 May 2021

AMERICA'S ABIDING VALUES AND SOFT POWER

JOSEPH S. NYE  JR.

The 45^th president’s rhetoric and policy rocked American soft power. The assault began in 2017. It grew in 2020 through mishandling of the pandemic. It went into free fall when Trump supporters, from crazy fringe groups, stormed the Capitol to steal an election – egged on by the president and allies.

A country’s soft power arises primarily from three sources: its culture (when it is attractive to others); its political values such as democracy and human rights (when it lives up to them); and its policies (when they are seen as legitimate). How a government behaves at home (for example, protecting a free press and the right to protest); in international institutions (consulting others and multilateralism); and in foreign policy (promoting development and human rights), matters.

Trump’s cavalier attitude towards human rights, his abandoning of international institutions and multilateralism, and his perpetuation of a falsehood – that he won a second term as president – do not resonate with American soft power. He is responsible for the decline in American attractiveness abroad as shown in the polls.

Our allies and other countries were appalled by the democratic dysfunction. But they surely were impressed by the way the system held – at elections, in Courts, in coercive moments involving the president and officials, in State Assemblies and Congress.

America has been wracked before by protests and violence. The problems it faces are mighty and many. There have been such episodes in the past as well. America erupted after Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were assassinated. Anti Vietnam War protests mobilised large segments of a generation.  Bombs, on campuses and in government offices, became commonplace. But the American People’s genius for resilience and reform always came to its rescue - like the proverbial cavalry.

Martin Luther King’s civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome”, illustrated that America’s power to attract rested on its civil society -  and its capacity to be self-critical and reform – not state policy.  This is a “meta soft power.”

The democratic heart of America’s politics exerts soft power in like-minded people across the world. But even when there is disruption, as in the Trump Administration, there are other sources of American soft power, sources not linked to the state. American movies, television and free press, attract large global audiences. U.S. foundations and charities have enormous altruistic outreach, that is attractive. American universities are magnets for international students and researchers.

America has faced increased political polarization over the past twenty years. Trump used nativist populism to wrest control of the Republican Party from centrists. The lesson from the 2016 election was that Trump’s newly carved-out base, of ‘forgotten Americans,’ is the key to electoral victory, including in down-ballot elections. Republican Senators and Congressmembers became loathe to invite primary challenges from the Trump base.

Fortunately for American democracy, the federal system makes local state officials responsible for carrying out elections. These officials rightly chose to honour their oath of allegiance, rather than bend to the president’s will.  Their speaking of truth to power was a product of American political culture – an enduring source of soft power.

American democracy has not met its demise. The voter turnout in the 2020 election was the highest ever. Many voters wanted to dislodge a president who had authoritarian tendencies. The result withstood sixty challenges in courts, including a Supreme Court with a Republican majority.  The actions of Republican and Democratic state officials, the Trump-appointed Attorney General, and the Bench, not only shored up, but also reinvigorated, American democracy - and soft power.

So far, Joe Biden has been a calming voice. While it is too soon to be sure, if he can tame the pandemic, revive the economy, and provide a political center that eases the polarization, we may be witnessing the end rather than the beginning of a dangerous political period. If so, American resilience will once again lead to a recovery of our soft power.

Joseph S. Nye Jr.                                                                                                                                                                                 

University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus. Former Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

28 January 2021

Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford University Press, 2020.