From Zero-sum Game to Reputational Security

From the point of view of European cultural diplomacy, the year 2021 stands as an improvement on 2020 only in so much as the initial shock of disruption subsided and the pandemic stabilised into a ‘new normal’ of familiar challenges. The underlying difficulties exposed by the pandemic remained all too evident. In practical terms the financial damage from the suspension of revenue-generating in-person events devastated cultural institutions and sent them ‘cap in hand’ to their governments for emergency support. In more abstract terms the pandemic revealed ethical deficiencies within the performance of European and North American democracy on the ground. Public behaviour around the region suggested that many citizens of Euro-Atlantic democracies placed personal freedom above the health of their neighbours. The continent’s democracies compared poorly to the more socially cohesive democracies of the East like South Korea and Taiwan.

Not all difficulties were directly related to the pandemic. NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 prompted political observers to speak of an end to the export of democratic values, the death of the ‘nation-building fantasy’ and evidence of the demise of the West. Taking stock on the current state of international cultural relations it is worth asking difficult questions. Do ‘big ticket’ state-funded enterprises like Germany’s Goethe Institute or Britain’s British Council still have a role? How should international cultural relations be conceptualised in a world in which democracy seems increasingly on the defensive?

Before considering the future role of cultural outreach it is important to emphasise that the COVID-19 pandemic was not the origin of all Europe’s ills, rather it occurred at the confluence of multiple crises including the global economic downturn that began in 2008 and which set so many countries looking for unilateral and strong-man-led solutions to their problems. Secondly it occurred in a world still wrestling with the political instability that always follows the advent of a new form of mass communication, in this case social media. The public’s susceptibility to disinformation on social media was evident long before their susceptibility to the SARSCoV-2 virus became apparent.

Events like the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US turned on its impact. Finally, the return of great power rivalry associated with the more aggressive stance taken by both Russia and China over the past decade gave the realm of international exchange a zero-sum element in which an advance for one was an implied retreat for another.

When the pandemic struck, COVID-19 became just one more opportunity for the most vociferous nation states to tout their own prowess and denigrate the performance of strategic rivals both individually and collectively through criticism of the blocs and alliances to which they might belong. More than this, in drawing up our assessment we should be cautious about accepting the gut feeling of journalists and political commentators on issues as far-reaching and broadly based as international perception of the western democratic way of life and the countries espousing it. Gauging international public opinion does not have to be treated as guess work. There are well-established studies of relative international image, such as the Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index, which give a clear indication of underlying trends year on year.

These studies simply do not show a flight of prestige from Western Europe but rather indicate an ongoing admiration for particular European actors such as the perennial number one of recent years – Germany – and moderate loss of faith in aspects of more obviously disrupted democracies such as the US (in 8th place in 2021) or the UK (in 5th place in 2021). States offering radically different political models such as Russia or China are still admired, but with eyes of realism that place them in the high 20s/low 30s (27th and 31st place respectively) and not as contenders for the top spot. The runner-up to Germany in 2021 is not an assertive strong man republic but rather Justin Trudeau’s ever-apologetic Canada.

The Power of Cultural Outreach

The enduring external appeal of Europe as a project is easy to detect. It is underlined by the ongoing attempts of border states to accede to the European Union. Simon Anholt has found that when he asks audiences about their image of the EU collectively, their admiration surpasses even that of Germany. Such reassuring findings should not be taken as an argument that nothing should change. Some of the older habits of European cultural outreach are no longer fit for purpose. Most especially, the familiar frame of unilaterally asserting a national brand is unhelpful at a time when the world’s problems – climate, migration, inequality, extremism and now pandemic too – so self-evidently require cooperative solutions developed across national boundaries. The only exception to this would be where the strength of the brand is expressed in terms of openness to collaboration, as the Nordics have long done. If avoiding simply showing off, what can cultural outreach accomplish?

In the face of hostile messaging from Russia and China, cultural outreach can be part of the mechanism by which regions or institutions targeted can develop counter narratives based on truth. The Nordics – a favourite target of Kremlin media as an alleged focal point for endemic child abuse – or similarly assailed regions should work to build as many positive experiences with international audiences as they can. It is also important to be open to elements of truth in hostile external messaging. It is better to live down an adversary’s accusation of racism with a high-profile initiative to significantly push back against injustice rather than merely attempt to shout it down with a rhetorical flourish of indignation or denial. As the historian Mary Dudziak has documented, the decisions of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy to support high-profile action in defence of the Civil Rights of African Americans in the later 1950s and early 1960s were driven by an understanding that Soviet criticism of US racism had too much truth to be simply denied.

Today, the West should pay attention to criticism not only of social endemic exclusion but also of corruption, hypocrisy and neglect of alliances. The best way to show the reality of values is to live them at home and apply them in foreign policy.

Reputation as an Integral Part of International Relations 

COVID international relations and as such must be integrated into concepts of security. We should think in terms of reputational security: those elements of a nation’s security which flow from being known in the world, which might range from the business benefits that flow from a positive brand to the diplomatic leverage gained when a country’s culture is admired and seen as relevant beyond its borders.

Soft power is part of this but has tended to be associated with the wealthiest and most visible countries. We have neglected the implications of its absence. The absence of external admiration can be a decisive factor in key moments of crisis. Had Ukraine been perceived differently by the rest of Europe with an identity more clearly separated from its former status as a state of the Soviet Union, it would have found sympathy and support more forthcoming in 2014.

Cultural outreach offers many paths to a positive reputation. The arts, cuisine, sports, or education are all rooted in culture and fall within the remit of cultural diplomacy.

The same reputational deficit counted against Czechoslovakia when its twenty-year-old integrity was threatened by the Adolf Hitler in 1938. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain explained his policy of essentially abandoning the Czechs by framing their crisis as a ‘quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’ For the most vulnerable countries – Kosovo for example –cultural diplomacy can be crucial to a future. Think of it as the equivalent of the advice given to potential hostages to tell their captor their name and build a picture of themselves as a real person with parents/ children, hopes, dreams and relevance.

Cultural outreach offers many paths to a positive reputation. The arts, cuisine, sports, or education are all rooted in culture and fall within the remit of cultural diplomacy. Ukraine today – in recognition of this – has invested in expanded cultural diplomacy to promote external knowledge of its distinctiveness. But reputational security need not be limited to the unilateral script. As threats apply to regions as well as individual nations it makes sense to address these threats collectively through collaborative projects.

Western governments have seen the value of assisting in the cultural development of civil society in vulnerable places such as Ukraine, the Baltics or the Western Balkans. It makes sense to provide assistance in the cultural field – projects focused on exchange and dialogue that improve the resilience and quality of life of our neighbours and regions – into a more clearly articulated goal of foreign policy.

An extension of the notion of a collective reputational security applied to a region or group of countries is that regional partners have an obligation to address the ways in which peers fail to deliver on the expected ethical standards. Recent examples of this process include the launch of a series of conferences to promote media freedom around the world. Hosted first by the UK and Canada in 2019 and sustained by Canada and Botswana, the media freedom initiative has drawn attention to problems not merely in adversarial states like Russia and China, but also the shortfalls in the Persian Gulf.

The discourse has created a reputational price for the routine repression of free media seen in the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In time, the price in terms of reputational security for repressing free media will exceed the alleged benefit to the nation state’s physical security of keeping a writer like UAE’s Ahmed Mansoor in jail or murdering a journalist like Saudi Arabia’s Jamal Khashoggi. It is essential that our criticism is not only for adversaries. The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee did well to award its 2021 prize to heroes of both Russian and Philippine free media: Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa, ‘for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.’

Listening, Trust, Cultural Work

Sound public diplomacy has always rested on listening, and cultural work has a key role as part of the listening process. If global partnerships require trust, formally facilitated exposure to one another’s culture is not a frivolous extra but an essential element in reducing barriers to cooperation. Such trust needs to be built between countries that wish to join together in support of shared values – the democracies with shared strategic interests in the South China Sea for example – but is also needed across the fault line separating these countries from the strategic adversaries that they presently regard as a threat: China, Russia and so forth.

Cultural agencies have an opportunity to model successful and productive contact across these boundaries. Looking to the future, a further role for cultural agencies will come at the point when our adversaries are open to alternatives to conflict. We live in a world in which media has been weaponised, resulting in increased instability on the world stage. Logically, when a weapon has a counterproductive impact, it should become the focus of a disarmament process. Multilateral versions of cultural and information disarmament were part of the climate which followed both world wars. Consider the implications of the famous preamble to the UNESCO constitution: ‘since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.’ Bilateral cultural and informational disarmament has also played a role. Information disarmament was a forgotten dimension of the successful US-Soviet rapprochement of the later 1980s. Features of that work included not only targeted cultural exchanges but also such projects as mutual historical textbook reviews, satellite link-up meetings between peers like women, war veterans and young people, and behind the scenes negotiations to take the heat out of media rhetoric.

The collective effort to generate and communicate a vision sufficiently attractive to bring together not only allies but adversaries too may be the ultimate task of our cultural agencies.

When the right time comes for such discussion, cultural agencies should be at the fore of a revival of such a process. Collaborations are essential if our world is to mobilise effectively against the transnational challenges of our times. Whether between fellow democracies or across the great fault lines of international ideology, collaborations require a common vision. The collective effort to generate and communicate a vision sufficiently attractive to bring together not only allies but adversaries too may be the ultimate task of our cultural agencies. There is – in short – no doubt that systematic cultural outreach remains an essential task for the nation state and is worthy of large-scale investment.