by Ryan Gawn | Jul 22, 2015 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global system, Influence and networks, UK
Last week saw the launch of a new global #softpower report, ranking the UK at the top of a 30-country index. Compiled by Portland, Facebook and ComRes, the report is described by Joseph Nye (who coined the term in 1990) as “the clearest picture to date of global soft power”, and has ranked countries in six categories (enterprise, culture, digital, government, engagement, education).
There are quite a few of these indices around now, with varying methodologies – nevertheless, this is the first to incorporate data on government’s online impact and international polling. Who’s at the top of the tables isn’t really surprising (the top 5 countries – UK, Germany, US, France, Canada – are identical to the top 5 in the Anholt-GFK Roper Nation Brand Index, but with a slight reordering of ranking). The US, Switzerland and France topped the specific categories, and although not first place in any of the categories, the UK ranked highest overall, reflecting its strength in culture, education, engagement & digital. More on the UK later.
What is really surprising is that China finishes last. Following a 2007 directive from Premier Hu Jintao, China has been investing heavily in soft power assets (such as the Xinhua news agency, aid/ development projects), at a time when others have been paring back their ambitions. Nevertheless, the impact of this investment isn’t borne out in the results, likely hindered by negative perceptions of China’s foreign policy, questionable domestic policies and a weakness in digital diplomacy. China came out strongest in the culture, likely reflective of the many Confucius Institutes dotted around the globe.
There are a few other interesting nuggets:
· Broader power trends are increasing the need for soft power – 3 factors driving global affairs away from bilateral diplomacy and hierarchies and toward a much more complex world of networks:
1. Rapid diffusion of power between states
2. Erosion of traditional power structures
3. Mass urbanisation
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by David Steven | Apr 21, 2009 | Conflict and security, UK
The Rt. Hon. The Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC – a junior Home Office minister responsible for counter-terrorism and security – has waded into the debate on policing at the G20. And he’s determined to sound like a berk:
Thousands of officers acted absolutely professionally and proportionately, thousands were actually able to demonstrate peacefully on our streets, criminal activity in the rest of the metropolis was kept to an absolute minimum and the police also maintained high levels of security.
And I think we should be extremely proud of them. This does not excuse acts which are criminal and there are now investigations taking place for those particulars.
But in general I think we are very well-served by our police. I am very proud of them and the way I approach it generally is they are on our side and they are our people…
I have to say I do not like the thought of water cannon, baton rounds or shooting people all of which seem to occur in some other countries and I am jolly glad I live in this country. But all of those things will be looked at.
In contrast, Denis O’Conner, the policeman heading the inquiry into the protest, has branded police tactics ‘unacceptable’…
(See also, Charlie’s concerns about how the police were hyping up the potential for trouble before the demonstrations and Alex’s account from afterwards.)
Update: It’s interesting to see what Lord West had to say about the G20 before it happened. Speaking in the Lords, he was in chipper mood. City workers might have advised to dress down during the protests, but he was planning to “dress up slightly”. Oh how his fellow peers laughed!
Asked whether young people should be allowed to protest about financial issues and climate change, the ex-First Sea Lord replied:
I have a number of youngsters myself [presumably, he’s referring to his children, not the herd of semi-feral youth he grazes on his back lawn]. The young people in this country are generally very good. I have been very impressed with the cadet forces and all sorts of groups, so I would certainly not say that they are all anarchists.
However, as I said, when there are so many thousands of people involved some will be troublemakers who are not there to be peaceful demonstrators. They do not have deep-held feelings about these things but are there for other reasons and ulterior motives. That is extremely unfortunate.
Perhaps we should expect keelhauling for troublemakers with ulterior motives to be proposed in the next Criminal Justice bill…
Update II: Here’s another weird one. Asked by Pauline Neville-Jones what monitoring of social network sites was undertaken by “government departments, agencies or bodies”, Lord West offered a flat denial: “The Government do [sic] not monitor social networking sites.” What at all? You have to be kidding me…
by Alex Evans | Apr 9, 2009 | London Summit, UK
Via flickr user woo-war
The story of Ian Tomlinson’s death following an assault by a police officer during the G20 riots continues to develop: last night Channel 4 News found new footage providing additional context to the assault, while the Independent Police Complaints Commission announced that it will undertake the investigation into Tomlinson’s death itself – rather than (as initially planned) outsourcing it to the City of London Police, who were involved in policing protests on the day. Now, attention is focusing on the prospect of a criminal prosection. As former deputy assistant police commissioner Brian Paddick put it yesterday,
If it is held that there is a link between the violence he [the officer] was inflicting and the heart attack [suffered by Tomlinson], that then is an assault, resulting in death, albeit unintended. If a court held it is an assault, it is an unlawful action resulting in manslaughter.
But in focusing on whether the officer who beat Tomlinson and shoved him to the ground will be prosecuted, we risk losing sight of a bigger point – that this was far from an isolated incident.
To see why, read the following disturbing account of how the police cleared the “climate camp” on Bishopsgate that took place later that day. The account was written by a friend and colleague, Chris Abbott – the deputy director of the Oxford Research Group, and (ironically, in view of what happened) a leading expert on conflict resolution – in an email sent to me and others, and reproduced with his permission.
I went down to the climate camp after work on Wednesday as I had heard that it was completely peaceful and I wanted to see what it was like. Unfortunately, I got trapped there when the police first charged and then penned everyone in early in the evening and none of us could get out (this was about 7.00-7.30pm). Footage of this is now on YouTube. During this first, entirely unprovoked, attack I lost my girlfriend in the crowd – but I later found out she was punched by a policeman while trying to stop another girl being trampled on after being knocked to the floor.
Once that had calmed down, my girlfriend and I found each other and were sat with others in front of the line of riot police on the south side of Bishopsgate. It was completely peaceful once again and we were even joking and talking with the police. We were there for a couple of hours when they suddenly charged again without any warning (this was about 9.30-10.00pm). We were still sat down and offered no resistance at all. My girlfriend was pressure pointed on the neck (extremely painful), dragged backwards off me and had both her wrists bent behind her back by two policemen who threatened to break them. They dragged her outside the police cordon and then said “what should we do with her now?” before the other said “let’s throw her back in”, which they did – head first, with her hands behind her back. She landed on the floor and has now got severe bruising on her legs (which we have photos of) and very painful wrists (which we actually thought might be broken).
At the same time, I was punched full in the face by one of the policemen. I was on the floor and absolutely no threat, but he still punched me. I was pulled up and shoved towards the crowd as a group of policemen descended on me, several of them smashing me in the head repeatedly with the sides of their shields. The whole time I had my hands in the air and did not fight back at all, but that didn’t stop them. Luckily someone saw what was happening and managed to pull me free from the group of policemen just before they completely surrounded me and cut me off from everyone else. It frightens me to think what they might have done had I not been pulled free. My nose and the side of my head are still very painful, but I was lucky given the damage that they could have caused from hitting me in the head.
Immediately after it happened we saw that the girl we had been sat next to had also been injured and was going into shock. We tried to get her medical attention, but none of us were offered any assistance at all by the police.
Once we had calmed down and made sure everyone was alright, we went to the other end of the camp to try and get out because my girlfriend needed to get home and take medication that she requires. We spoke to a police medic to explain the situation, detailing the medication and why it was needed, but were told that they were under specific orders not to let anyone out even for medication. We continued to try and get the medic’s attention to explain the urgency of the situation, but he ignored us. By now things were getting very tense between the police and the crowd and my girlfriend got very panicky, falling to the ground. Only at this point did the police finally let us through the line to seek medical attention (this was about 11.30pm).
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by Alex Evans | Apr 4, 2009 | London Summit
Cute story from the Obama visit: a few Foreign Office staffers picked up that Obama and Brown were going to do their joint press conference on Wednesday in the FCO’s (vast) Locarno Room rather than the smaller room usually used for press conferences at Number 10. So, obviously, they decide to loiter around the grand staircase to catch a glimpse of the great man as he passes.
Well, the security staff soon cotton on to their little game and usher them away. A game of cat and mouse proceeds for a few minutes until, in an example of the kind of lateral thinking one looks for from a 21st century ministry of foreign affairs, they hit on the idea of “having a meeting” in a room that just happens to be strategically placed on the way to the Locarno suite.
A long while later, David Miliband passes with Hillary Clinton, who gives them a nice smile and a friendly wave, and this is thought to be pretty cool.
A further wait ensues.
Then, at last, Gordon and Barack stride past.
Squeals of delight are stifled.
And then Obama glances back… catches sight of them… pauses… breaks stride… turns around… and comes in to say hello, while Gordon chuckles indulgently in the corridor.
Bastards. Bastards!
(I, on the other hand, spent 15 minutes amidst the crowd of tourists loitering outside the gates to Downing Street later that day, hoping in equal measure to (a) see the Motorcade sweep in, and (b) avoid being caught behaving in this embarrassingly starstruck way by anyone I know. First the motorcade drops the President off in Horseguards Parade, on the other side of the block. And then, two minutes later, a Downing Street foreign policy adviser I know walks past… catches sight of me… pauses… breaks stride… turns around… and asks solicitously: “are you protesting?” Bastard. Bastard!)
by Alex Evans | Apr 2, 2009 | Global system, London Summit
I’ve already done a post with some quick reactions to the specifics of the communique, but before I pass out with fatigue, a final reflection on the day.
As summits go, today was a big success, particularly for Gordon Brown. If you thought Obama was warm about Brown’s leadership yesterday, that was nothing compared to some of the language he used in his press conference at the end of the summit – where, incidentally, he charmed the assembled press to the extent that they couldn’t help applauding at the end. ‘Things you seldom see’, as they say.
But at the same time, today was always – of necessity – going to be about fighting the immediate crisis, and trying to prime some kind of immediate-term economic recovery.
What remains so far unaddressed in leaders’ in-trays is a set of longer-term crises – and the need for longer-term recovery – on at least four key underlying issues: climate change; global economic imbalances; the issue of reserve currencies; and the need to head off another oil and food price spike, which could well get underway before the economic downturn is over.
All four of these issues raise big questions about changing the way the global economy works, and the need to ‘manage globalisation’ to make it more resilient, sustainable and equitable. All also involve big questions about power relations between the developed economies, emerging economies and low income economies. And most fundamentally of all, they’re inextricably interrelated with one another.
At the moment, as just about every commission, task-force or high level panel on international reform in recent years has noted, the international system deals with these kinds of issues in a particularly fragmented, ‘stove-piped’, silo-riven fashion.
That’s one reason why more and more of the hardest global issues get escalated to heads’ level, in bodies like the G8 or the G20. But as the track record of the G8 over the last decade demonstrates, heads’ level bodies don’t obviously have the capacity to cope with them. Initiatives and carefully crafted communique language all too often trump far-reaching, genuinely comprehensive action; it’s the old problem of the urgent crowding out the essential. That was the case before the credit crunch – and it’s doubly so now.
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