There is no question that Saudi Arabia with the merger of its upstart LIV golf tour and the venerable US-based Professional Golfers Association (PGA) is attempting to make a direct connection with millions of influential Americans, Europeans and Asians via what is for many of them a passion, an element of their life that is a source of joy and meaning. Other Gulf states have done it by buying soccer teams or recruiting soccer players with big contracts, by hosting Formula 1 grand prix or tennis tournaments. Qatar did it by hosting the last World Cup as Russia did it before them. For decades countries have tried to do this by hosting the Olympics. Sports, like creative arts, is powerful way to touch a foreign audience and forge a connection with them. As with other cultural initiatives, the goal is to reach people not via political arguments or through their governments, but viscerally, in terms of what they feel. But so too has South Korea, which has had a national strategy to promote K-pop and Korean films or television shows from Parasite to Squid Game.Ī tactic many have found useful in this regard is what we sometimes call sports-washing. China has done it with its Belt and Road initiative that has a big cultural element. Other countries realize the power of culture and have made cultural diplomacy a centerpiece of their international policies. Even today, in our own national culture wars, there are movements to ban books, ban “dangerous” stories, erase history, denigrate cultural diversity, the wrong clothes, the wrong religious beliefs. We do it in our history books that tell only the stories of conquerors and that infantilize or minimize the conquered. European missionaries did it in colony after colony. The Taliban did this to non-Islamic icons in Afghanistan when they took power. Just as he kidnaps Ukrainian children to deny the country its future, he tears apart its cultural fabric to deny it its past, to erase fathers, mothers and other ancestors. He has denigrated Ukrainian language, destroyed landmarks. He has sought to redefine conquered people as Russian. Putin has suggested Ukraine is not actually a nation, does not have its own history. There are plenty of examples in the world today. A primary goal in warfare has been to destroy cultural icons, national symbols, works of art or buildings or flags or heritage sites that fueled the sense of identity and perhaps even the patriotic drive of a targeted nation. Since time immemorial, one of the very first objectives of warring powers was to denigrate the culture of their enemies and to rally around their own shared beliefs, values, traditions and experiences. This is crystal clear because it is not a mistake other nations make. He called it “soft power.” And while the concept-which also pertains to economic and other forms of nation-to-nation leverage-was worthy of study as he suggested, calling anything “soft” does not engender great respect in the macho wannabe world of the Blob.īut it is a big mistake to categorize cultural influence as a lesser form of power. A brilliant international relations scholar, Harvard’s Joe Nye, more than three decades ago coined a term that has since been used to refer to those forms of national influence that did not involve force and coercion. Culture is often downplayed, not afforded serious attention in U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |