By Ksenia Smertina
7th International Summer School “Russia and EU:
Legal and Political Issues of International
Cooperation”
Structure of the Lecture
 Soft power – meaning and definition, evolution of the
concept, current debates, main critics;
 the EU debates on normative and civilian nature of the
power;
 Russia’s soft power: learning how to be smart
 Main problems of the Russia-EU soft power
cooperation
Soft, Hard and Smart Power
 emerged in the early 90’s in the publications of




US scholar and foreign policy practitioner,
Joseph Nye;
Soft power - the power of attraction, which
enables one to make others ‘want what you
want’, and do what you want, although
voluntarily through their cultural affinity with
the one who wields the power;
soft power is exercised by state in in a
peacefull, cooperative manner
Hard power –use of coersion and payement;
‘smart power’ – a combination of soft and hard
power. Ability to use it porperly: attractive
national economic model or effective peace
keeping operations conducted by state’s army
that at the end contributes positively to the
international image of the state that provides
such policies.
Smart Power: Instruments and
Resources
 instruments are such as:
public diplomacy,
broadcasting, exchange
programs, development
assistance, disaster reliefs,
military-to-military
contacts, international PR,
reputation management,
nation-branding, finally
propaganda.
 Thus, we can state that soft
power (smart power) rests
primarily on combination
of three resources: its
culture (in places where it
is attractive to the others),
its political values (when it
lives up to them at home
and abroad), and its
foreign policies (when they
are seen as legitimate and
having moral authority).
Smart Power: Instruments and
Resources
Instruments
• public diplomacy,
• broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster reliefs, military-tomilitary contacts, international PR, reputation management, nation-branding, finally
propaganda
Resources
• culture;
• political values ;
• foreign policies (need to seen legitimate and having moral authority).
Critics
 Western-based power structure dominated by
the US viewed as a global hegemon.
 Presence of hegemonic power makes it clearly
impossible to accumulate soft power without a
solid ‘hard power’ base;
 Relationships between hard power and soft power
– is not really clear and makes a lot of confusion;
 How can ordinary people influence foreign policy
decisions and foreign policy making? Is it possible
in real life?
The EU debates - Normative
Power Europe
 The ENP was introduced in 2002 by European scholar
Ian Manners;
 Normative basis of the EU, which predisposes it to act
in a normative way in world politics;
 3 three sources of ‘normativity’:
 historical context ;
 hybrid polity;
 political legal constitutionalism.
 Case study - how the EU and its member states actively
mobilize on the abolition of the death penalty
worldwide
Civilian and Military Powers
 Civilian power is an actor
 Military power – actor
which uses civilian means
for persuasion, to pursue
civilian ends, and whose
foreign policy making
process is subject to
democratic control or
public scrutiny.
 Ideal type civilian powers:
Austria, Finland, Ireland,
Sweden, Switzerland
which uses military means,
relies on coercion to
influence other actors,
unilaterally pursues
‘military or militarized
ends’ and whose foreign
policy process is not
democratic.
 Examples: North Korea,
Hitler’s Third Reich
The EU debates on normative vs civilian power
Normative Power
Civilian Power
Military Power
• Based on
historical,
political and legal
assumtions;
• Only norms;
• No security or
common foreign
policy
• non-military
force that uses
explicitly only
such instruments
as economic,
diplomatic,
cultural tools;
• Some authors
admits the
presence of
common security
politics
• use of armed
force;
• relies on coercion
to influence other
actors,
unilaterally
pursues ‘military
or militarized
ends’ and whose
foreign policy
process is not
democratic
Russia’s soft power: learning how to be
smart
 Soft power and the importance of
public diplomacy came to the attention
of Russian policy-makers around the
mid-2000s;
 Key foreign policy documents – the
Foreign Policy Concept of 2008 and the
2010 Addendum, 2013 – contain
references to the importance of public
diplomacy activities in the fields of
cultural and humanitarian cooperation,
information support, and positive
image making. The notion of soft
powers emerges in the FPC of 2013;
Key Instruments
 Rossotrudnichestvo (The Federal Agency





for CIS Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad,
and International Humanitarian
Cooperation) of the Foreign Ministry
(2008);
Valdai International Discussion Club
(2004);
Russky Mir Foundation (2007);
Presidential Commission to Counter
Attempts to Falsify History to the
Detriment of Russia’s Interests (2009-2012);
Institute for Democracy and Cooperation
(2007),
Gorchakov Fund for the Support of Public
Diplomacy (2010)
Public Diplomacy
 ‘Information support’ initiatives - Russia Beyond the
Headlines; Russia Today (RT);
 Events:
 political like G-8 summit in Saint Petersburg 2006 and the
APEC summit in Vladivostok 2012;
 Sports like Universiade 2013, the Winter Olympics in Sochi
2014 and the World Cup in 2018;
 Cultural – years of Russia abroad, Eurovision contest 2009 and
Russia’s prizewinners positions in this competition etc.
 Help of PR professionals - the American-based company
Ketchum, that could work on its reputation problem and
promote a positive image of Russia abroad.
Peculiarities of Russian use of soft
power concept
 focus on the region of the former Soviet Union – the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the
Baltics;
 little attention towards Western nations, although
Russia’s leaders have long been concerned about the
country’s image and perceptions in the West;
 Russia’s main soft power instrument is the
government ,which makes it balancing between public
diplomacy and propaganda.
Main problems of the Russia-EU soft
power cooperation
 we can state that now this resource does not work very
well.
 Indeed, the image of Russia is improving in Europe, the
EU remains the most attractive place for Russian
tourists, students, business but still we do not use our
soft power possibilities in maximum.
 If we look why Russia is popular, we will see that this is
because of more or less ‘independent’ factors:
 the new generation;
 oil factor;
 decreased its military influence.