The real power of soft power!

‘Soft power, versus hard power; discuss’. By this any university professor would be asking his or her students to look at the influence of individual states, or alliances of states or whole value systems and compare how that influence may be brought to bear through peaceful means as opposed to military means? Looking around the World there are many countries that arguably punch far above their military weight through their judicious use of aid, trade and media influence. Norway springs to mind, as does Qatar and until recently Britain as well. In the Maghreb, Morocco has been ploughing its own course, with a variety of media and other outlets, telling stories and by providing a broad enough spread of news and information, attracting in some of those who might not necessarily know much about the Maghreb or Morocco, save as a holiday destination.

Historically and post Empire, Britain relied heavily on ‘soft power’. Its BBC World Service was funded by the UK Foreign Office and was listened to in many different languages across the planet. There was never much doubt that it, in common, with all state sponsored media had its biases, but it was always sufficiently editorially independent to be broadly trusted. The United States tended to use blunter instruments of soft power especially during the Cold War when the Voice of America was an important factor in the weakening of Communist rule in eastern Europe. Media and communications were important factors in this use of soft power, but then so was overseas development aid and support for the international agencies designed to assist the global South. In recent years, this aspect of Western soft power has been diminished as funding is cut and diverted elsewhere, so it is a little early to be able to say what effect all of this may have had on the relative influence of countries such as the USA and the UK.

In recent years, the global South has increasingly come to see the importance of soft power. In the case of Qatar, BBC engineers who had been building out new satellite TV facilities for the Saudis, but who were forced to leave under a cloud, instead came to Doha. The result was al Jazeera Arabic TV and then al Jazeera English TV. Both networks, essentially were given a large degree of editorial independence by their Qatar funders and have become extraordinary influential. Other countries such as China, Russia, Venezuela, Israel and Turkey have all to an extent tried to copy the al Jazeera model of rolling 24-hour news and comment. Arguably few, if any, have reached al Jazeera’s gold standard. And here I must declare an interest; I was one of the first to join al Jazeera English TV as the new Network’s UN Correspondent. And back then it immediately became obvious to me that Qatar’s exercise in soft power was having enormous influence right across the English-speaking World, and particularly in the United States, where initially there was a very real battle to have US cable companies carry al Jazeera. Being there, being talked about, but not being broadcast just encouraged that thirst to be able to watch it. 

Of course, it is never easy to set up a new media network, although it is probably considerably cheaper than it might have been twenty odd years ago. So, there is a lesson here; soft power works; it appears to be money well spent.

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly