When reading Joseph S. Nye’s Public Diplomacy and Soft Power, I was struck by his focus on the U.S. He does propose a sort of universal framework in which foreign policy, domestic values and policies, high culture, and pop culture are all sources of soft power. However, he never really tries to apply that framework to another country. There is an underlying assumption that something about the U.S. makes it have eminently greater soft power than others might. Zahran and Ramos quote him as saying “the United States benefits from a universalistic culture.”[1] Step back for a second and suppose that you are a leader of a state that is far from universalistic. In fact, many around the globe may revile your state. Since you don’t have a universalistic culture, should you just forget about trying to generate soft power? The answer is no.
A couple months ago, I was watching a documentary on the History Channel based on the book Killing Pablo, by Mark Bowden. Pablo Escobar was of course an infamous drug lord during an especially blood-soaked epoch of Colombian history. Yet, Colombians elected him to the legislature. Certainly, many feared him, but that alone cannot explain the vote. Escobar had built soccer fields in some of the poorest parts of the country that the government neglected. Through the hard power of drug money, he built an air of magnanimity, turning himself into a Robin Hood figure.
If someone like Escobar can pull off a feat like that, then surely all nations, not just democracies can exercise soft power. They can do so by focusing international attention on aspects that their audience would see as positive, just as Escobar influenced his domestic audience. China for instance, likes to win friends in international forums by promoting its ideal of non-interference in other’s affairs. That idea appeals to regimes which face a lot of criticism internationally. Crucially, the Chinese don’t have to convince the populations of these often authoritarian regimes of anything, but only have to reach the elites.
As Brian Hocking notes in Rethinking the ‘New’ Public Diplomacy, states regularly try to create, in the minds of others, a gap between their rival’s image and deeds. However, if states can do that to rivals, logically, they should be able to close the gap between the perception and reality of their own state. That is why the public-relations framework that Gilboa talks about is a useful way to help understand PD. Public relations, in either a one-way or two-way communication, focuses audience attention on the aspects of reality most beneficial to your brand. So, there is hope after all for un-free societies to have soft power.
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