The value of soft power and the importance of new voices

The concept of soft power is one of the most interesting and innovative ideas in the science of international relations in recent decades. Essentially, soft power translates into the ability of a country to influence the choices of other countries through the persuasive force and attractiveness of its own culture and lifestyle rather than through coercion and force. The link between soft power and pop culture is therefore particularly evident (think of the global impact of post-World War II American pop culture on the imagination of entire generations of young people around the world), but equally important are the activities that promote the international dissemination of every aspect of material and symbolic culture, from food to language courses to the global prestige of educational institutions.

Many countries, including our own, boast a long tradition of soft power. Renaissance Italy was perhaps the most important and recognised laboratory that allowed small local states, whose military might was totally inadequate compared to that of the great continental powers, to negotiate, often from non-subordinate positions, with the latter thanks to the extraordinary symbolic value of their artistic patronage. But does it still make sense to speak of soft power today, at a time when an increasing number of increasingly threatening armed conflicts are lighting up the global scene as not for decades? This question was answered by a small but important symposium hosted at Harvard by the Center for Government and International Studies, which brought together an international group of speakers from the worlds of academia, business and the arts under the guidance of Christina Lessa of Art Vue, a global consultancy working on large-scale, culturally-based development projects especially in emerging countries, Doris Sommer, Harvard professor and director of the international NGO Cultural Agents, and José Falconi, assistant professor of art history and human rights at the University of Connecticut.

The meeting was opened by Joseph Nye, professor emeritus at Harvard and inventor of the concept of soft power, who emphasised how culture and the arts still matter in a framework of international relations in which, despite the increasing use of weapons, cultural influence still plays a decisive role in the medium to long term. The other speakers were Deborah Abroal, director of sponsorship for the Americas at UBS, Saladin Ambar, professor of political science at Rutgers University, Phil Chan, choreographer and founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, a company that combats Asian racial stereotypes, Abdulnasser Gharem, Saudi artist and co-founder of Edge of Arabia, an organisation focused on dialogue between Arab and Western cultures, Halla bint Khalid a Saudi Arabian artist who works on children's books as a form of cultural capacitation, Rafal Niemojewski, director of the Biennial Foundation, an organisation that supports and promotes art biennials around the world, Mike Pell, director of the Microsoft Garage in New York and inventor of the PDF, James Robinson, professor of global conflict studies at the University of Chicago and recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Antoinette Torres, director of strategic initiatives at the Cooper Union in New York, and the writer.The main idea that emerged from the round table was that while it is true that the relationship between art, culture and soft power is more relevant today than ever before, it is equally true that the Western unilateralism that dominated the global scene and colonised the imagination of the 'other worlds' is now definitively over.

Many new voices are also appearing thanks to the speed of transmission of ideas enabled by digital technologies, already giving us a glimpse of a new scenario of cultural multilateralism that has enabled countries such as Japan first and South Korea today in particular to become poles of soft power comparable to that of the major Western countries in the space of a few decades. And the enormous cultural investments made, for example, by many Gulf countries testify to how open the game of future global influence is.

On the other hand, countries like China that have made soft power a true flagship of their international relations policy have so far failed to achieve the desired results, and the reason for this is to be found above all in the complex dynamic between cultural influence and freedom of expression. Is it possible to directly control politically the forms of creativity in a country and at the same time aspire to transform it into a global pole of cultural influence? In reality, the answer is more complex than it seems, especially taking into account the physiological time of transition to more decentralised and democratic forms of expression in countries with a long autocratic tradition. As Abdulnasser Gharem, whose ingenious and ironic work is revolutionising an art scene such as Saudi Arabia's, has commented, the real, first obstacle to social change triggered by art and creativity, and the most difficult objective to achieve, is not freedom of expression, but freedom of thought, and it is not necessarily the case that the former implies the latter.