Soft power

We have projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, increasing investment in African countries, increasingly strong-arming any country that recognizes or any country that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

But I think now there's this soft power thing happening as well.

Where, you know, as China catches up with the U.S. on all of these different parameters, the U.S. still is like by far, by far the world's greatest sort of...

It has the greatest soft power with its culture and stuff like that.

But China understands the power of people like John Cena.

It understands the power of people like Mbappe.

But they released all this money, and I asked him why he thought this happened.

He said it was because the administration lost that soft power.

They lost the access that they had.

to various you know resources around the world that they needed to kind of do their own jobs and so that has resumed at least at least in part just for that international division of the forest service so that's

So now China and Russia are both broadcasting on those frequencies to the same people in the same languages, pitching autocracy.

Musk killed off USAID, and millions of people are going to die as a consequence of that.

And our soft power, particularly across Africa, has vanished.

And China is stepping in.

Americans aren't as skeptical of foreign aid as Washington thinks.

We're going to be talking soft power and humanitarian assistance with her in just a little bit.

Jim, there's a lot out there this week.

There's a lot of Russian manipulation of elections.

Thanks for having me, Jim.

The piece was really interesting, and I think we maybe need to start with what has happened.

We've been tracking it in the podcast as America's unilateral surrender and issues of soft power.

But what was the impact of Trump's elimination of USAID?

single example is a difficult one, but I would maybe just start by saying that when we're talking about Africa's influence, we are maybe solely speaking about it through hard power terms, the economic might, military power.

But we also do need to think about soft power.

And I think you can see so many examples throughout Africa of how that is really on the rise.

There's so many musical artists and content creators online who have so much more influence than the leaders of their countries.

I mean, Queen Elizabeth didn't have hard power.

She couldn't negotiate a treaty or impose a tax or deploy troops, but she had soft power.

And the ability she had to charm American presidents, to remind them of how valuable the alliance between Great Britain and the United States had been, that proved over and over again to be invaluable to her country.

And they loved the bling.

You can also see his quotes and interview segments in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist.

And he is the author of the book, Reframing China, TikTok, Soft Power, and the Battle for Global Narratives.

So welcome to both of you.

Well, thank you.

And then also you have the Chinese EVs, the battery innovations.

and on a more entertaining side, the Chinese video games.

So I think what is especially interesting is that this is not always experienced as Chinese soft power.

I don't think a young person is necessarily downloading an app or watching a C drama live stream because they want to learn about China, right? I think they're doing this because the products kind of solve a problem and they also create entertainment and the same time offer a type of new athletics.

We all understand that as foreign service officers.

um i think what was striking about those cuts is that pepfar in particular had had such strong bipartisan support for decades as you mentioned in your intro literally 20 years the program was started by george w bush famously as a way of not just alleviating suffering in africa but also demonstrating america's core humanitarian values and that is a core u.s national interest in my opinion and in in the opinion of many uh people is that we do have many interests including one is is caring and demonstrating our humanitarian values around the world and that's earned us a lot of soft power over uh over the years so know the the pepfar program had enormous bipartisan support through republican administrations as well as democratic through republican held congresses as well as democratic uh congresses uh over 20 years at remarkable levels of uh of funding and and human resources that were uh required to generate these results which are truly uh astonishing as you as you mentioned uh in zambia we estimate that you know we contributed the us pepfar support contributed to that life expectancy uh average life expectancy jumping over 20 years for the average zambian uh in in this in the space of two decades that's not only because of u.s support we contributed to it but we we believe that our support through pepfar and many other programs uh were responsible for that really kind of impressive number that's only in zambia and you could also just kind of cite uh other countries across africa and also in other parts of the world as well so i think i think that that gets to the uh point of your point about the cuts What's the impact? Again, I've been gone for over a year now, but I think we have a lot of anecdotal information as well as news media reports that suggest that obviously just on a very basic level, the amount of resources that are now in the country to be devoted to those who are infected, as well as to help prevent new cases, new infections of HIV, those resources have gone down significantly.

The U.S. cuts have been important and large, but also other donors have pulled back, I think, as a direct consequence of the U.S., let's say, stepping back in its leadership role.

in the health sphere.

Yeah, no, great point, Peter.

Thank you.

And you had alluded to soft power earlier, I recall you, and I believe it was Joseph Nye who cited that concept way back when, right? And the idea and really kind of underpinning of our work, right, is that you're helping out, you're engaging, sharing what we know, and also showing the practical benefits of democratic institutions, strong institutions, transparency, anti-corruption.

So you're hoping that this assistance translates into partnership, translates into relations that end with good trade relations, good bilateral relations.

We don't have time, unfortunately, to get into all of your 10 steps, but there was at least one I wanted to talk about in a bit of detail, which is step six, which, as you put it, is get stronger and smarter.

And that includes talk of rebuilding soft power, which, as regular listeners will be aware, is a subject of recurrent interest to Monocle magazine and Monocle radio.

If we focus that down to the United Kingdom, what could the UK be doing better to reassert its soft power, which, though it pains me somewhat to say this as an Australian, I think is actually a considerable asset and one the UK could do a lot more with?

Yeah, I'm glad you raised that because I've sat in Parliament and there have been cheers when the overseas aid budget has been cut and slid across the table to our defence budget because we're feeling pressures on our hard power and we need to invest there.

That's fine.

It undermines the fact that soft power... and hard power are two sides of the same security coin.

So if you've got, going back to a virus, breaks out in Africa, having more tanks doesn't help you put that out.

And that'll end up at our doorstep one day, as it did in the past.