{"id":3130,"date":"2023-07-19T21:18:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T21:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geostrategy.club\/2023\/07\/19\/soft-power-multilateral-international-institutions-and-resources\/"},"modified":"2024-06-27T10:07:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T08:07:02","slug":"soft-power-multilateral-international-institutions-and-resources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geostrategy.club\/pt\/soft-power-multilateral-international-institutions-and-resources\/","title":{"rendered":"Soft Power, Multilateral International Institutions, and Resources"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If we are taking into consideration the relations between IR and diplomacy, founded on the contractual relations between the states, it can be argued that soft power in this case mostly depends on the ability of the state authorities to build and maintain international institutions. From the time after 1945, as consequences of the bloody result of WWII, international, transnational, and supranational multilateral institutions and organizations became valued by the international community more and more primarily as a certain mechanism of the rule of international law for the sake to preserve the stability and functioning of the international system in global policy and IR. State authority can achieve soft power within the framework of institutional power, by designing institutions, agenda-setting, or creating the will of the coalition as a whole \u2013 like the policy of the USA within NATO, for instance.<\/span><\/p>\n In principle, there are five focal factors on which the soft power of the state authority directly depends within the framework of the international, transnational, and supranational institutions:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The soft power of any state government depends mostly on three fundamental resources: 1) The culture of the state, i.e., its people; 2) The political system of the state; and 3) The foreign policy of the government. All three of these resources can be more or less attractive or not attractive for others for different political, ethnonational, confessional, or ideological reasons. For instance, soft power founded on the attractiveness of the government\u2019s foreign policy can be fruitful only if others see it as legitimate according to the norms and rules of international law and having moral authority.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, there are parenthetical conditions that are the focal factors in determining whether the resources of soft power are going to be translated into the behavior of attraction that can influence others and direct their policies toward favorable outcomes. It has to be clearly noticed that with soft power, what the target thinks is of extreme importance followed by the target matters as much as the agents.<\/span><\/p>\n In many practical cases, culture is an important resource of soft power but usually and especially by the countries of Great Powers (GP).[iv]<\/a> Culture, in general, is the pattern of social behaviors by which certain groups are transmitting knowledge and values to other groups, and it is functioning on multiple levels.[v]<\/a> However, many cultural aspects are universal, some of them are national or very particular to social strata or small groups (for instance, ethnocultural minorities). One of the crucial features of culture is that it is never static, and different cultures are interacting in different ways. For Western policymakers, one of the cardinal questions in this matter is: Can Western cultural attraction reduce current extremist appeals in Islamic societies? Many researchers, especially Americans, see in this case an unbridgeable cultural and civilizational divide. However, in Iran, for instance, Western music and films are popular with many youngsters like in some other Islamic states. That is a way how the Western cultural soft power is promulgated in Islamic culture and society.<\/span><\/p>\n However, culture, political values, and foreign policies are not the only resources that are producing soft power but they are cardinal. For instance, military resources are able to produce soft power too like hard power policy. The same is in many practical cases around the world true of economic resources which are used to attract the policy of a certain state. A successful economy is a very significant and powerful resource of attraction under the umbrella of soft power, like both Japan and China in the case of the Asia-Pacific region, for instance, have each discovered. The economic power is able, at the same time, to provide the resources that are proper to be used as hard power inducements in the form of aid or coercive sanctions. In reality, however, it is very difficult to make difference in what part of an economic or financial relationship is comprised of hard and soft power. For instance, the centralized bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels of the European Union (EU) is keen to describe the desire by other (East European) states to join the EU as a sign of the EU\u2019s soft power (primarily seen in financial aid).[vi]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Many realists argue that the difference between hard and soft power is a contrast between realism and idealism, but, in essence, there is no contradiction between realism and soft power. In other words, soft power cannot be considered a form of liberalism or idealism as it is, in essence, a form of power or one way of getting desired results in politics. Nevertheless, legitimacy is a powerful reality and, consequently, competitive struggles over international legitimacy became a significant part of enhancing or depriving actors of soft power.<\/span><\/p>\n In soft power policy are no state authorities involved as diplomacy in our time includes a variety of non-state actors like different corporations, organizations, institutions, NGOs, etc. all of them have to a certain degree soft power of their own. In practice, even individual celebrities can use their soft power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a>References<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n [i] The 39th<\/sup> President of the USA, James Earl (\u201cJimmy\u201d) Carter (1977\u22121981) increased the American soft power and, in general, the image of the USA in IR when in 1978 he achieved the Camp David agreement which established peace between Israel and the leading Arab nation \u2013 Egypt. That was the most enduring diplomatic act of reconciliation in the Middle East since the 1940s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> For example, Chinese authority\u2019s constructive role in the 1955 Bandung Conference in seeking common ground while reserving differences to meetings of participants, became a key factor of conference\u2019s success and, consequently, the reputation of China and its soft power expanded in the countries of the third world (mainly Africa).<\/span><\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> For instance, today\u2019s Chinese very positive and attractive influence in the African continent is partially due to the accumulated soft power in the 1960s as many African nations did not forget China\u2019s timely and disinterested aid to them at that time. Nevertheless, the soft power of China in the African emerging market countries is as well as originating in Chinese business activities which are naturally guided mainly by narrow self-interest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> The fundamental division of the world states according to their impact on global affairs is just into two basic categories:<\/span><\/p>\n A GP state is such a state that is considered to be a member of the most powerful and influential group of states in a hierarchical order of the world state-system. Today, this term is related to the state that is regarded to be among the most powerful states in the global political system [Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics<\/em>, Second edition, London\u2212New York: Routledge, 2012, 578].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The most problematic issue in the categorization of the states within the world state-system is applied criteria. Nevertheless, the criteria which define one state to be or not to be a great power is usually, at least from the academic point of view, of the following basic ten-point conditions:<\/span><\/p>\n A GP status to some state can be and formally recognized by the international community as it was the case by the League of Nations in the interwar time or by the United Nations Organization (UNO) after WWII up today (five veto-rights permanent member states of the Security Council \u2013 China, Russia, France, the USA, and the United Kingdom). A GP status of these five \u201eextraordinary\u201c members of the UNSC is guaranteed by their practice of unanimity. In other words, a concept of the GP unanimity holds that on all resolutions and\/or proposals before the UNSC, a veto by any one of these five (privileged) states can be used that practically means that one GP state can block further work of the UNSC on a certain issue [Steven L. Spiegel et al, World Politics in a New Era<\/em>, Third Edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth\/Thomson Learning, 2004, 696]. Undoubtedly, one of the critical features of any GP state is its power projection that is a considerable influence, by force or not, beyond state\u2019s borders, i.e. abroad, that less powerful countries could not match (for instance, the NATO military aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 conducted in fact by the USA).<\/span><\/p>\n The GP states are interconnected within a Great-Power System<\/em> that is the set of special relationships between and among this privileged club of the most powerful global actors in IR. Those special relations are conducted by their own rules and patterns of interaction as the GP have very extraordinary ways of behaving and treating each other. This special way is, however, not applied to other states or other actors in global politics and the system of IR.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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