Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft

“Culture humanizes… Politics demonizes”—Wole Soyinka

This quote from Nigerian playwright and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, taken from the White House Conference on cultural diplomacy in November 2000, embodies my approach to the role of culture and artists in the context of international affairs. Soyinka’s remarks are just as apt today with regard to conflicts and tensions in the Middle East and other regions, where the demonizing tendencies of politics dominate.

Let me introduce a few terms. Soft power, coined by Joseph Nye, is familiar to many, if not fully understood. Nye was looking for an alternative, a shortcut term to explain everything that is not hard power—power that is coercive, whether by military or economic force. Hard power is a one-way street. One country or region wages war or imposes sanctions or tariffs on another.

Soft power operates differently. It is a two-way street and relies on the powers of persuasion and attraction. Importantly, it only works if the person projecting soft power is appreciated and admired by the target. None of the tools of soft power—education, creative expression in all its forms, food, to name a few—will succeed if the projector of the soft power is not respected, which is a problem for Trump’s United States with some of our traditional allies.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—a fantastic organization, full disclosure, NED funds my Timbuktu Renaissance project—coined the term sharp power to describe when authoritarian governments use the tools of soft power to achieve their goals. And we're seeing sharp power in action now in the United States, with the Trump administration’s assault on universities, takeover of the Kennedy Center, and pressure on the press.

Messages of anti-extremism, anti-corruption, pro-peace, tolerance of diversity, and advocating for social justice will resonate more powerfully coming from local artists.

Twenty-first century diplomacy differs dramatically from what happened in the last century. International relations are not just state to state. You have really important non-state actors, good and bad: terrorist groups, nonprofits, foundations, and corporations. You have the 24/7 news cycle, social media, and citizen journalism. In authoritarian states where the media is controlled by the government, artists and cultural actors have tremendous importance. Through literature, music, theatre, film, and dance, they reveal what ordinary citizens are really thinking, while official government channels spread propaganda.

Artists tend to speak in stories, which can seem less threatening to authoritarian or extremist governments than political statements. But stories reveal the impact of policies in human terms. They seduce and persuade.

The humanizing power of stories, of music, of art is a potent weapon against the dehumanization being deployed by authoritarian regimes around the world. In this environment, the traditional approach to cultural diplomacy, sending American cultural actors and goods around the world, is outdated. In the globally connected twenty-first century, American cultural products are widely accessible. It is no longer certain that ideas and messages from the United States, Europe, or other developed regions will resonate in under-resourced countries or in conflict situations.

Instead, developed countries should use their capacity to leverage local voices. Chances are that messages of anti-extremism, anti-corruption, pro-peace, tolerance of diversity, and advocating for social justice will resonate more powerfully coming from local artists who can speak more authentically about what people are experiencing than can foreign powers.

Take, for example, what happened in Egypt during and after the Revolution. Ganzeer, a graffiti artist, painted an image of an army tank bearing down on an Egyptian everyman, a guy on a bicycle balancing bread on his head. Right away, you get the story of this completely uneven power struggle. Your sympathy goes immediately to the boy on the bike. Those sentiments may not have been sufficient to defeat the Egyptian army, but they earned the millions of revolutionaries global sympathy. Predictably, Egypt’s authoritarian president, General Sisi, persecuted and banished dissident artists. Fortunately for the United States, many, including Ganzeer, sought refuge here.

Even though so many people in Washington and elsewhere make their living writing policy papers, that is not what motivates people. That's not what gets people to change their political opinions. Emotions do. There is significant neurological research that backs this up.

We are trained to think that only hard power brings about real change. That is not right. Look at the breakup of the Soviet Union. Yes, the defense treaties and the buildup of arms between the United States and the Soviet Union were important factors, but those don't move people to take risks, to try to change their lives. That was culture.

The United States government sponsored jazz diplomacy during the Cold War, arguably the heyday of cultural diplomacy. Most of the artists sent abroad on four- to six-week trips across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America were Black. This happened in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, a time of intense segregation in the United States. Musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and others spoke freely about the conditions that they lived under back home. In his autobiography Dizzy Gillespie recounts his response to the offer of a State Department briefing before he traveled: "I've got three hundred years of briefing. I know what they've done to us, and I'm not going to make any excuses. If they ask me any questions, I'm going to answer as honestly as I can.” Of course, this speaking up, criticizing authority in the context of a trip that was sponsored by that same authority, made an indelible impression on people from countries where free speech was prohibited. They understood that all that talk about freedom of speech in the United States was not propaganda but rather was real.

Creatives have the capacity to show through stories what people—not the White House—are really thinking about this moment of dramatic upheaval.

During the Cold War, there was actually a kind of virtual loop that took place between Americans serving abroad in the State Department, in various government capacities, and what was happening in the United States. When horrific images of Black people being beaten and attacked in the United States were broadcast all over the world, United States diplomats serving abroad would call back to Washington and say, “I can't do my job here. I can't say that we have a better system than the Soviet system when people are seeing that this is going on in our country.” Those calls from abroad were a factor in Lyndon Johnson's decision to push forward dramatic civil rights legislation.

Remember, I said that soft power was a two-way street. You have to be admired and respected in order to project soft power effectively. Since the Gaza war began, the United States’s soft power has been eroding steadily due to its unwavering support for Israel’s actions. This happened already in the Biden administration but has accelerated under Trump. The same is true for Europe. Even though there is significant sympathy for Palestinians among European populations, the governments are still supporting Israel in the war.

Instead of protecting dissent, the United States government is pressuring local governments and institutions such as universities to crack down on protesters. You are seeing the opposite of what I was just describing: Dissent is punished. This administration ignores not only human rights and civil rights, but also the long-term damage of these unlawful actions. Evidently, they don't believe that soft power is, in fact, an important strength for the United States. What is sad is that the damage that will be done over the next three years will take decades, at least, to repair.

This is why the arts and creative expression are so important. The rest of the world is looking at what is happening in the United States, and they see the protests, which is good, but they don't know what Americans are thinking. Creatives have the capacity to show through stories what people—not the White House—are really thinking about this moment of dramatic upheaval. The influence of artists and their stories can be profound, and it often comes in ways that aren't intentional.

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show have had extraordinary global influence. Of the many Daily Show imitations around the world—the sincerest form of flattery—the most famous and popular one was the show in Egypt, Al Bernameg, Bassem Youssef, a surgeon turned revolutionary and a humorous, biting political commentator. Youssef admired Jon Stewart from afar, but eventually, they became close, and Stewart mentored his Egyptian protégé.

The many spin-offs of the Daily Show, particularly Yousef’s Al Bernameg, represent true soft power. No government program marketed The Daily Show, nor did Stewart try to spread his influence. People around the world—comedians, commentators, and others—admired The Daily Show and imitated it, adapting Jon Stewart’s style to their own situations. In so doing, they deployed the power of comedy to resist authoritarianism all over the world.

Another example of soft power is how hip hop has spread globally—not through a government program but because the music and the lyrics resonated. The early political hip hop from the nineties and the early aughts captured the imaginations of millions. People translated hip hop into their own languages and spoke about their own problems. Hip hop heralded the Arab Spring when Tunisian artist El General rapped (sic, original in Arabic):

Mr. President your people is dead 
Many people eat from garbage 
And you see what is happening in the country 
Misery everywhere 
And people who have not found a place to sleep 
I am speaking in the name of the people
Who are suffering and were put under the feet

At the beginning of the Arab Spring—you remember, it started in Tunisia—the policy world of Washington was taken completely by surprise. They didn't know how miserable people were under these regimes. How the people felt came out in rap music, as well as other forms of creative expression.

El General himself helped precipitate the Tunisian Revolution, the spark that grew into the Arab Spring. Shortly after vegetable seller Mohammed Bouazizi—so desperate because he'd been asked for one more bribe he couldn’t pay—set himself on fire, El General was imprisoned because of his music. A crowd outside the jail protesting his arrest grew bigger and bigger. People looked around and realized there was power in numbers. El General was freed, and the Tunisian Revolution had begun, to be followed by Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

In Myanmar, Phyo Zeya Thaw, a hip-hop artist, voiced the misery of the people under the military junta. A devoted follower of Aung San Suu Kyi, he ran and was elected to Parliament. Evidently, Thaw presented such a threat to the military junta that they had him executed. That is how powerful creative expression is. Phyo Zeya Thaw posed a greater danger to the regime as a musician than if he had just been a parliamentarian who made speeches and wrote policy papers. Thaw reached people, and his words spread like wildfire, and he died for it.

Another theme I want to introduce is the importance of narrative, history, and memory. The Ukraine war is basically a war about history, about identity. Putin actually declared war in an essay that he wrote in July of 2021, arguing that, historically, Ukraine belonged to Russia and that Ukraine as a country separate from Russia didn't exist. Less than a year later, the invasion and the war began.

This is the Ukrainians’ answer to Ukraine as part of Russia: Ukraine started long before Russia and was a well-established civilization when Moscow was still just a forest. Ukrainians from the St. Gabriel Institute auditing my Diplomacy and Culture class last spring talked about how important Ukrainian culture, writing in particular, is for their identity. They are fighting literally every day for their identity as Ukrainians, and at the core of that identity is their culture. They are not the only ones who understand this. From the start, the Russian regime grasped the importance of culture to the Ukrainians. One of the very first targets in this war was a museum dedicated to the art of Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko. Right from the start, the Russian forces sought to destroy the tangible signs of Ukraine’s identity and history.

The Ukraine war shows, once again, that the totalitarians, the extremists, recognize how important culture is and how much it gives strength, resilience, purpose, and social cohesion to people. When they want to weaken a population, they tear apart the bonds that hold them together by attacking culture.

The same thing, of course, tragically, is happening in Gaza, where now simply everything is being destroyed. From the very start, the Israelis targeted historical sites, from mosques to hammams to libraries, trying to destroy the Gazan identity.

Storytelling is also critical for carrying on and projecting Gazan and Palestinian identity. Last summer, the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (the Lab) held a storytelling workshop, led by Global Lab fellow Fidaa Ataya. Working with Lab associate producer Emma Jaster, Fidaa brought female Palestinian storytellers to Italy where they gathered with other Lab Fellows for a week of mentorship and sharing. What Fidaa does with her storytelling students is help women who've always told stories in private, following convention, to share publicly and have an even stronger impact. The women feel their own strength in speaking up and sharing traditions, and their strength inspires their audiences.

Stories, plays in particular, can also humanize a political situation and make it tangible for broader audiences. The Island, by the anti-apartheid playwright Athol Fugard, is a play about two Black prisoners in a white apartheid prison in South Africa. The Freedom Theatre in Jenin in the West Bank adapted The Island to portray Palestinians in an Israeli prison. The Palestinian version, which the Lab hosted at Georgetown and which has been seen all over the world, required few changes from the original.

When we hosted the play of The Island at Georgetown in 2013, I saw something that I saw again and again when I was an ambassador. As you know, when you witness a narrative, you live for a few hours afterwards in that story. As a result, you are emotionally open, emotionally vulnerable. If you can reach people in that moment following a performance, it's possible to shift their political thinking. When the Lab held a panel discussion with policymakers after The Island, someone in the audience asked this question: “If the situation between Israel in Palestine is indeed as we have seen in this play—uneven, imbalanced, with Israel so dominant, how can we even be talking about a peace process under those conditions?” At that moment, then-Secretary of State John Kerry was actively pursuing peace. The policy expert on the panel, Shibley Telhami, said that the conditions, which were indeed completely imbalanced, made a just peace impossible. I thought, well, the people in this room, whatever their sympathies are, have seen something that has moved them, and maybe they leave a little more open, with a few more questions about this situation.

I'm going to end with one final example of the different stories that culture and politics tell. We tend to judge countries through their politics, but we miss so much when we don't look at countries through their culture.

The true power of culture is recognized, sadly, by all the wrong people—authoritarians and extremists—and they punish artists for it.

This is nowhere clearer than in Afghanistan. In March 2019 two significant, diametrically opposite, events occurred. First, the United States, under the first Trump administration, began negotiations with the Taliban, excluding the Afghan government. The United States’s sole interest was how to get Americans out of Afghanistan. But that, of course, was going to dramatically affect the future of the country. At the same time, for the first time in its thirteen-year history, a woman won the televised singing contest Afghan Star, an American Idol-inspired Afghan production. They sang only Afghan songs, and the winners were selected by the public voting through their phones. Women had gotten into the finals before, but this was the very first time that a woman was voted the winner.

So, which country is Afghanistan? Is it the country that's represented by the Taliban, or is it the country where the majority of the people voted for a young, minority woman to win a singing contest? Judging the country through politics, the United States decided that the Taliban, who ban music entirely, can govern Afghanistan.

Afghans understood Afghan Star as an experience of democracy, as the 2009 documentary named after the show tells us. In the Afghan Star film, a young female finalist from Kandahar—the stronghold of the Taliban—said, “My friends tell me, ‘What are you doing? You're Pashtun.’ And they tell me, ‘You are leaving us for democracy.’” She, and apparently her friends, associated this meritocratic program with decisions made by popular vote, with democracy.

An excellent 2024 podcast about Afghan Star, narrated by John Legend, recounts the improbable story of how this program began in a country with no television professionals and grew and thrived for thirteen seasons. Afghan Star regularly attracted eleven million viewers, a third of the country’s population. On the podcast Afghan Star’s first producer, Daoud Siddiqui, said that people had more faith in the Afghan Star voting than they did in the actual elections.

Afghan Star, music, stories presented through theatre and film—these offer different examples of how culture can influence society and can move people towards political and social change. Culture can reveal what people are really thinking in a country and what kind of future they really want. The true power of culture is recognized, sadly, by all the wrong people—authoritarians and extremists—and they punish artists for it.

I hope none of you experience this, but we know everyone is at risk now, and so I just want to wish you strength and recognize your power. You can tell people what is really going on. Your stories will penetrate this incredible fog that we're living through. We are so lucky to be led by our colleagues all over the world who have been through these experiences before and have found ways to be impactful as artists in authoritarian contexts. And I, for one, am so glad to be learning from this Cultivating Cultural Resilience series, and I'm grateful to Emma Jaster and Brandice Thompson and everyone behind them for organizing it.