Transatlantic Tensions: The Global Battle for Cultural Influence

Amira El Ahl: 
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of "Die Kulturmittler:innen", the ifa podcast on foreign cultural policy. My name is Amira El Ahl, and I'm delighted to have you with me again for this episode. For decades, the United States set the tone in global culture through Hollywood, higher education, technology, and diplomacy.

But in 2025, Trump's second administration didn't just pull back. It launched a sweeping dismantling of America's soft power machinery. The impact is profound and widespread.

On one hand, academic exchange programmes like the esteemed Fulbright programme, once called "the crown jewel of American soft power", are facing staggering financial cuts, putting countless academic careers on hold overnight. On the other hand, the White House has begun withdrawing from multilateral initiatives like the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), walking away from decades of partnership in shaping global rules for education, culture, and public health. This marks not just a simple reorientation; it's a strategic turning point with ripple effects that reach classrooms, museums, and hospitals far beyond America's own borders.

As Washington turns on inward and embraces a more transactional worldview, its global cultural influence seems to fade. But what happens when the world's leading soft power steps back? Who might be looking to step in? And how can Europe seize the moment to redefine its global cultural role? With our guest today, Edward Knudsen, we explore the shifting landscape of global influence and the competition to fill America's soft power vacuum. He is a research fellow at the Centre for International Security at the Herti School, an affiliate policy fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre, and is doing his PhD in International Relations at the University of Oxford.

His research focusses on historical political economy and comparative soft power. Recently, he published a report within the ifa research programme in cooperation with the Herti School called "Domination Without Hegemony? The Emerging Contest to Fill the US' Soft Power Vacuum". Welcome to "Die Kulturmittler:innen", Edward Knudsen.

 

Edward Knudsen:
Thanks so much for having me. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Let's start with the basics. How do you define soft power in today's geopolitical landscape? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
So, we conceptualise soft power as one of three different types of power that countries can have, the other two being military and economic power. And I think you can think of power in general as basically a way to get the outcomes you want from international setting. That would be from mostly other countries. 

Soft power, originally defined by Joseph Nye, he calls it, the ability to get others to want what you want. So, as opposed to, say, military power, where you either invade a country or threaten to invade them or some kind of attacks in order to get a political change. With soft power, you try to seek that change through things like persuasion, through kind of sharing your worldview, things of that nature. And of course, economic power – the third – it could be kind of sticks and carrots there, whether that's trying to get access to a market or sanction, something more coercive.

But with soft power, you see a lot of different actors present in there. Some are more kind of deliberate policy instruments, the way a country might actually try to boost its profile, might try to attract more foreign researchers. But there's also a lot of historical factors, things that are a little bit harder to manipulate or alter in the short run, you know, things like culture, tradition, sort of perceived values of a given country.

Those would all play into a country's soft power on the world scale. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
So, like the trust also that people kind of build up over decades and decades into something like that. But how have the policies of the second Trump administration accelerated the decline of US soft power? 

I mean, just one example is the near total dismantling of USAID with some 83 percent of programmes officially cut, which affect people dramatically all over the world. I mean, especially not in America, but all over the world. I mean, that's crazy, you know? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
No, yeah, absolutely. And I think before I answer that, there's a few things to say about US soft power in particular that sets it apart from a lot of its kind of traditional allies, especially in the Euro-Atlantic space.

And that's the relatively strong importance of the private sector to the US. So, you have, you know, all the best-known universities in the US, right? Say the Ivy League, Stanford, et cetera. Those are all private institutions legally. Of course, they do get a lot of funding from the federal government.

Things like Hollywood, you know, that's obviously privately run and funded. Of course, there are connections with the government at various points of time, things like, say, like the US' most prominent international broadcaster is CNN, which is a private corporation, not something like the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, et cetera. And so, there is this kind of level of distance between the state and the cultural sector.

Of course, the US has kind of used its power and used its influence to actually kind of manipulate some of these private sector establishments over time, notably during the Cold War. There was a lot of use of kind of cultural instruments funded by the CIA, for example. There's a great book on this by Frances S. Saunders.

But overall, the things that maybe you would think of are the kind of average person globally would think of when they say, you know, what's an American cultural export, right? They're going to think of something kind of famously Harvard and Hollywood, right? And, you know, those are those are private. So those are not directly part of the US government. The US does, of course, have a lot of instruments that do more closely parallel its, say, European counterparts.

There just might not be as prominent things like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, which recently closed down due to budget cuts, the Fulbright and so on. So, there are a number of programmes. It's just that the US is in a kind of a relatively special position and it's basically the only country you could do this type of cultural vandalism to or sort of attacks on soft power that wouldn't be completely catastrophic.

Because there is still this very large and semi-independent private sector, cultural apparatus, that it can kind of fall back on. Of course, Trump has even made assaults on that, whether that's sort of trying to get his allies in actually private media institutions or kind of cutting funding for universities. So, it's not like the US state can't. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Yeah. Or cutting funds for Voice of America, et cetera. I mean, it's literally trying to close that down, no? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, that kind of thing. And it's easier for the US State to attack a television channel that they directly fund. Trump's kind of taken it that next step and tried to actually exert some influence on the private sector as well.

My point is just that it's a little bit more difficult to do that than it would, say, if there's a kind of far-right takeover in France or something like that. So much more of the cultural sector is there directly attached or directed by the State. So, I think that's important to keep in mind and kind of complicates the picture here. But in terms of Trump's attacks on US soft power, I would broadly divide those up into three different realms.

One would be the actual attacks on these types of institutions. Right. You know, that's on Voice of America. USAID is not kind of a direct like foreign cultural policy institution. However, you know, there are some kind of cultural programmes that go along with USAID. But yeah, so the first would be the attacks on things like scholarships, on the kind of television channels that people might hear.

The second would be attacks on funding and sort of diplomatic disruption more broadly. That's where I would put the USAID cuts mostly. Say that, you know, withdrawing from UNESCO, sort of even like the tariffs have a negative soft power effect. You see this big kind of "rally 'round the flag"effect in Canada against the United States because they just sort of perceive this as internationally disruptive and combative. 

And the third, I think, would be slightly more kind of nebulous. But it's the kind of attack on like traditional, you could say, American values and freedom, et cetera. And, you know, the US has not always lived up to those values over time. You know, whether that's the Vietnam War, Iraq War, et cetera. But there is a kind of power to saying, like we're the country that supports liberal democracy. We support human rights. Again not always living up to those ideals.

But completely throwing those aside and saying we don't care about any of that. We think the sustainable development goals are an attack on American sovereignty and condemning those. And this like, yeah, this sort of narrative assault on the normative foundations of American soft power is very important as well.

So, that would be the three being sort of specific targeted attacks on external cultural policy to kind of diplomatic disruption. And three nebulous narrative. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
It's very interesting that you also divide them in these three categories, because it makes it more clear.

You describe the US approach in your report as "dominance without cultural hegemony". Can you explain that a little bit? And what does that look like in practise? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, absolutely. This is sort of adapting some of the ideas of cultural hegemony from the Italian Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci.

He talks a lot about hegemony in a kind of domestic sense. And we work to apply that to the international one. And he talks about how in a kind of domestic power relations, it's not enough for the ruling class to just have like the guns and the money. You need to get some kind of belief from people that the existing social structures and hierarchies have an actual logic to them. And that's what he would call "hegemony".

And so, this term "dominance without hegemony" comes from a book written about actually colonial India, where they talk about this, where the sort of British ruling elites, they had this power, but they didn't have any "buy in" among most people. And so, then that obviously contributes to independence over time.

And international space, then what "hegemony" would mean is, you know, not just that the US has the world's largest economy, not just that it has the world's largest and most powerful military, but that people actually believe in the US project and US ideals. And so, you can kind of think broadly the era of not just dominance, but rather hegemony would be the Cold War and especially the post-Cold War era. Where the US does have the kind of ability to dominate in a material sense, both economically and military. But they're also espousing values that appeal to people, right? 

You know, people want to move to the US. I like the idea of freedom. You know, it sounds kind of cheesy, but Ronald Reagan, the shining city on a hill, et cetera. You can kind of criticise how well that's worked in practise. But there is a real and there has been a real draw of the United States, in addition to all of these actual outputs. I mean, the amount of Europeans who, when they were teenagers, will say, "Oh my God, I wish I could have gone to an American High School or party like it is in the movies." It sounds very silly, but it's powerful. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Yeah. We all, I mean, seriously, we all grew up with like, you know, Beverly Hills. I don't know what it's called in England in America.

I mean, this is the things that you see on television. It's not necessarily German shows, but you aspire to be like, you know, American. So, it's more than Hollywood. It has a big draw. You’re completely right. 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, it's been fascinating. You know, I've been in Europe for about 10 years now, but grew up in the States.

And it's really interesting to hear people talk about, when they were kids like, "Oh my God, I was so obsessed with this." And, you know, it all seems kind of banal and ordinary to me.

And I think that actually sort of contributes to, I think, the lack of appreciation of US cultural power among Americans, because when you're in the kind of centre of all of this, you don't realise you are. The same way, you know, like Europeans knowing like, "Oh, yeah, the Third Congressional District of Pennsylvania is a really key battleground in the upcoming election." It's like people know all this stuff about the US. That's really dumb founds a lot of Americans. And so, I think they don't realise the degree of power they have. And so, it makes it easier to tolerate the vandal. 

But this would all this would all contribute to this this idea of hegemony, right? You know, yes, the US has the guns and the money, but it also has all this we're talking about. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
The soft power. 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Exactly. And what Trump seems to be trying to take away is saying, we don't care about like making you like us anymore.  Like, we don't need to make you want what we want to use the Joseph Nye formulation. We'll just do what we want using the economic power, sanctions, tariffs, et cetera, and also threats of military force or even the use of military force. 

Obviously, there's strikes on Iran. It seems like we're still debating kind of interventions in Venezuela. And I think this is an important point to make because sometimes people will say Trump's an isolationist, right? But he's not an isolationist. He's very willing to intervene or engage abroad.

It's just that it has to be on the US terms, and it's often with coercive, economic or outright violent military force. And this whole concept of we want to espouse American values and get people to want to come to the US and like us, that's completely out the window. And so, that's what we talk about going from hegemony to just a strategy.

 

Amira El Ahl:
Okay, so that is interesting. Is this retreat from the soft power that we just talked about, is this intentional? Is this an intentional decision that Trump and his administration is taking? Or is it just a byproduct of domestic political shifts and the shift that you were just talking about going into military interventions, but just on our terms, not on maybe other people's terms? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, I don't think anyone in the administration would sort of see themselves as, you know, we're turning down – like, they have a little control switch and they're turning the soft power dial down because they're like, "No, we don't want that anymore". I don't think they would necessarily formulate it like that. I think, they just think it's irrelevant, or it just like it doesn't matter.

And I think that's a kind of privilege that only a very kind of culturally powerful country could have. Like, they don't they don't realise the amount of influence that they're able to project worldwide due to US soft power. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Seriously? I mean, I find that incredible to believe that you don't see the impact that you have.

 

Edward Knudsen:
They think the US is terribly disadvantaged and taken advantage of by people from abroad. And no, it like it kind of goes back to this point about that like on an anecdotal level, about hearing about people's childhoods and what they thought of the US and Americans not being aware of that.

But I think that kind of ignorance goes all the way up to the top. And so, I don't think they realise exactly what they're losing and what they're throwing away at the same time. Back to my first point, is there a little bit more insulated from the consequences of their actions because there is still this kind of private sector appeal of you.

So, it's not like, you know, if you had Marine Le Pen in France and there's so much funding for, say, like French cinema through that. If you made this all kind of right wing propaganda, et cetera, you know, like you changed all the funding requirements in French cinema, you have you see an immediate effect.

The US, there's a little bit more wiggle room. And so, like I said, that's the luxury the US has. And so, the policy approach from the US currently, I think, it's a little bit of ignorance.

Like I said, I also think it's just a belief that like soft power is basically soft, right? You know, like that's squishy. That's not important. Like, we're the real kind of serious manly men here. Like, we'll bomb you or we'll sanction you, but we're not going to try to persuade you of anything. That's for losers. That's for the kind of like old guard of the US that's been betraying American workers, been betraying America, et cetera. All this kind of Trump rhetoric about the US being ripped off.

And I think they think funding, you know, you see some of the Doge-like posts that people will make me like, "Oh my God, you know, we spent 16 million on a theatre production in Brazil" or something. And it's like no money for the US, right? 500 people to like America more for that much. I mean, it sounds silly to a domestic eye. And they don't realise the power of it. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Yeah. Or the USAID.I mean, I think it was even Marco Rubio who said that – a year before he changed his mind – it's just one percent of the whole domestic product, you know, of the budget of the US that they're spending. And it has such an incredible impact on people's lives all around the world. And it really has no impact on the budget of the US.

And still they're cutting 83 percent. It's kind of crazy to think, you know, that they're doing that. 

 

Edward Knudsen:
I think some of it's for a domestic audience, but I think some of it is also just to show we're not to kind of prove to the rest of the world that we're not in this type of game anymore.

Yeah, like using more persuasive means. But it's like you said, the actual amounts of money are not very substantial, which makes the kind of focus on foreign aid sometimes a bit perplexing, right? Because you can target your programmes pretty well, it's really not an expensive way to improve your image.

 

Amira El Ahl:
But it's interesting that we're not in the game anymore. So, who's now in the game? I mean, have other powers like China, like India or middle powers like Turkey responded to this vacuum that the US has created? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
So, I think it's worth maybe backing up a little bit because it's not like, you know, all of a sudden the US steps back and the rest of the world then says, "Oh my God, there's this thing called soft power that we're missing out on." The term and the research on this is there's kind of an interesting interlinkage between the actual kind of academic research and the policy focus. And so, we include this in the paper, but there's this really like exponential rise in the amount of academic publications on soft power. At the same time, there's a huge increase in the amount of countries who explicitly pursue a strategy to increase their soft power. And so, Joseph Nye coins this term in 1990, and it's really the 21st century when that picks up both academically and in a policy sense. You see this kind of interlinkage between the two.

And especially in the 2010s, you see the amount of countries that really have explicit soft power strategies increase dramatically. Not just, your kind of classic cultural powers like, say, the US, France, Germany, UK. Of course, you know, then the Soviet Union had a big role to play in that during the Cold War, that kind of fell off after the fall of the Soviet Union. 

But then you see Russia kind of re-engage and you also see countries like Turkey. I think it was maybe 2014, the Erdoğan says, we need to toil and exert blood, sweat and tears, kind of like Churchillian rhetoric to acquire greater soft power. And then, you know, see the rise of institutions like the Yunus Emre Institute or TRT World, which are roughly analogous to the Goethe Institute or Deutsche Welle. They have their own version of this as a middle power.

China expands really rapidly with their Confucius Institutes, China Global Television. And so, there are a number of countries that are kind of already trying to establish a greater presence in this space. And like I said, some of it's actually driven. It's a rare case, I think, actually of academia influencing policy a lot. You have Chinese policymakers apparently calling up Joseph Nye and being like, hey, how can we increase our soft power? Which is his response was, well, don't seem like you're trying so hard because the best propaganda doesn't look like propaganda. And so, you know, the point being that the race was kind of on before this. And European countries have had very strong soft power and cultural industries.

Germany traditionally hasn't liked to use the term soft power because for historical reasons being sort of anxious about the concept of power. And there's been some greater moves to try to pool that at the European level through a greater external cultural policy on the EU level. And China, as I said, had been spending really massive amounts of money expanding their network. There had already been a backlash to these Confucius Institutes, though most in the US have been closed in a lot of central and eastern and northern Europe. They've been closed as well and be kind of reallocated to the Global South as part of their development strategy. 

So, this was all going before 2025, right? It’s not like Trump makes these cuts and that everyone says, "Do something". There was already a lot of competition. And I think the key issue with Trump and the cuts here is we kind of use the term like filling the vacuum because that's a lot of what's out there in terms of the journalistic coverage of this. 

But it's not a kind of simple like one to one somewhat like there's X amount of cultural space in the US has, you know, stepped back from 45 percent of it. And then that like exact amount of space is going to get filled by someone else. There's not a kind of finite amount of culture in the world or influence in the world. That being said, there is there is a lot of fear, especially even the kind of the old guard of the US foreign policy establishment. They'll often say these things like, "Oh, this is a gift to Xi. This is a gift to Putin. They're going to step in and fill the vacuum left by the US." And I think there's some there's some truth to that. 

You know, people, especially more in the Chinese case, I don't think Russia has a tonne of cultural sort of narrative appeal beyond its borders. Maybe it used to a little bit in the 2010s, but 2022 really changed that. And China, they're definitely making some moves, like I said, especially along there, the Belt and Road Initiative, the areas with a lot of international development. However, there's not really any one single power that is trying to take up this complete kind of leadership role of the US. And I think that has to do a little bit with the actual ideologies that are espoused.

Like I said, you can critique how well America has lived up to its values over time. But it does have this very totalising, very universalist ideology like Shining City on a Hill, et cetera. This idea that the end of history concept that everybody's going to move to a kind of liberal democratic capitalism, human rights, everyone's going to kind of move there over time. And so, there's this way that the US can sell an image of kind of directionality or like a teleology of world history that has a kind of appeal, where China doesn't really have that, at least not anymore. I mean, you could Marxism in its own way has a kind of like teleology to it that like this is the world is all going to end up when workers of the world unite and we have a dictatorship of the proletariat, et cetera. But there's a kind of directionality to that. But that's gone. The Soviet Union is gone. China's capitalist, state capitalist. So, what China is selling now isn't this kind of world historical vision. It's a pretty pragmatic one.

And so, they might step in and actually kind of surpass the US in terms of cultural appeal and influence in some specific countries where they're working in terms of development. But there's not really a kind of vision that they're going to use to, like, replace what the US has originally been selling. And so, I think that's very important to remember.

Like I said, it's not like the US takes one step back and China just steps into that space because they're completely different systems, because they have completely different ideologies. And I think a lot of opponents of Trump's foreign policy, count myself among them. But I think there's others who kind of try to, the way they think they can get support for their policies and opposition to Trump's is always kind of invoking this like China scare.

And we make the point in the paper that, yes, this is probably good for China's global influence. But it doesn't mean that it's not as it's not as simple as the US leaving the stage in China becoming the star of the show. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
You said, I think, a very important thing. You said vision, you know, to have a vision. So, in your study, you identify four trade-offs that Europe and Germany must confront as they consider stepping into the soft power vacuum. Let's call it vacuum here.

Can you briefly walk us through these trade-offs and so like how Europe and Germany could maybe fill in if they have a vision? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Absolutely. And I think, like we said we have run through like potential challengers, right? Who could play a greater role. And for the various reasons I laid out we don't think China is actually as kind of strong a contender, as is often said, relatively agnostic about regime type.

And but as you point out, as you allude to here, the other kind of obvious contender for a country or like or region that does kind of espouse very universalist values is Europe, you know, the European Union. And we kind of focus specifically on Germany just due to the location of the project and our previous research. And we identify, though, as you said, like four kind of trade-offs as Europe wants to step maybe more into this role and maybe, you know, pick up some of the slack left by the US or just generally kind of use this moment to assert itself and in some ways step out of the US's shadow.

And we try to make it really clear that there are a number of key decisions that Europe needs to face, that it's been able to kind of just sort of rest on its laurels or stay relatively complacent over time. And the first of those trade-offs that we discuss is, we call it between Atlanticism and advancing universalist liberal democratic principles. Europe used to be able to be a close US ally and say, you know, we're in NATO, we support Atlanticism, we support the United States and we believe in universal human rights and these kind of democratic principles.

It's pretty hard to do that when the kind of rhetoric and actions coming from the White House are what they are. So, you can see this tension in Europe, you know, do we stay close to our US ally for security and trade reasons? Or, do we kind of move out on our own a little bit more and actually stick up for the values we reportedly support? And so, we say that's kind of a trade-off and that decision is going to become a lot clearer. 

The second one is between trying to sort of be a repairman or repair person for the liberal international order as it's kind of falling apart and kind of filling gaps left from US withdrawal versus trying to create a new or kind of more revised and modernised system.

I mean, a specific example of this might be that Europe has chosen to step in and fund some of Radio for Europe as the US funding for that has dried up. And maybe that's the right thing to do in the short run. But we don't think necessarily like that Europe should just yeah, like kind of be the cleanup crew for the wreckage left by the US. Rather use the funding, use the resources, use its narratives in order to help establish its own type of vision.

The third is about the independence of external cultural policy institutions. External cultural policy I've used the term a few times, but that's basically the policies that a government might enact in order to increase its soft power. And the institutions there, you know, in the German context, those would be things like I mentioned a few times, Goethe [Institute] or ifa or Deutsche Welle, et cetera.

And Germany and a lot of other Western European countries enjoy the institutions, enjoy a pretty strong degree of independence. You know, they are funded often by the Foreign Office, the Foreign Ministry. But operationally, there's a great degree of autonomy.

What you're seeing now as defence budgets kind of go up and people get policymakers get more concerned about security threats. And, also, there's just kind of general budget strains. You see some indications – this is across a number of countries – you see some indications that policymakers want to reduce that independence because this is not something we necessarily support. But you can see it from their perspective, if you're the foreign minister and you say "Well, we're giving X millions or billions of dollars to these institutions." And they may be espousing narratives or funding projects that like I don't personally support. And that's basically what you have in the US and the extreme. But it's because it's very hard to quantify, right?

You know, you can say, "Oh, we gave this much money and we have this many tanks now". But, if you say, "Oh, we funded this many language classes and cultural exchange events", nobody sees it as an element of softness to analysing soft power, too.

And I don't that's not something we really try to run away from. I mean, we in our reports we've done also with ifa and the external cultural policy monitor, which has a dozen country reports. We try to find a lot of quantitative data, but it's like input data. Where we don't really claim to say exactly what it does. And from the governmental perspective, they want a return on investment. I can see how it's sort of frustrating to say, it's important. This is a good thing to do. We can't tell you exactly how. But as you were saying with the US, you just have the sort of good vibes around it.

You want to create that and it is very important. And there are, you know, if you want to be instrumental about it, there are pay-offs down the line when that comes to heritage, trade, et cetera. But in the short term, it's very hard to quantify. That is a feature, not a bargain in our analysis, but from a kind of being counter perspective. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
So, that was the third or was the fourth? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Oh, yeah, that was the third. And so, that was this sort of my way of saying that one of the reasons for the pressure on the sort of lack of independence because they might say, "Well, what are we really getting for this?" Okay, no, we're going to need Deutsche Welle, just an example, they're not actually doing this, but say the German foreign minister is like, "This is ridiculous, they can't be publishing news broadcasts that are counter to what I believe about international affairs. We need to have direct supervision of the ministry over the foreign broadcaster". That's the kind of pressure we're talking about. 

Hypothetically in the German case, not hypothetically at all in the US case. Where the first kind of threats where we're going to directly monitor your content, and then it was never mind, we're just getting rid of it. And then you have the fourth. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
I just wanted to ask, so what's the fourth trade-off or the fourth scenario? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, and the fourth would be between sort of Europe's strategy about soft power, and that would be just pursuing a kind of narrative agenda and trying to, you know, trying to kind of get their voice out there more versus also seeing soft power in these kind of three types of power as not entirely disconnected, but rather that understanding that a country's material well-being and actually contributes to its soft power. Europe used to have a great luxury of being both rich and free. So, they could say, if you live by our type of values, look, we're rich. There wasn't really any contradiction between the sort of material reality and the message. As kind of, you know, economic stagnation has set in, and there's challenges in Europe. I think some of those promises ring a little more hollow.

And from a soft power perspective, it's kind of tempting to almost double down, I guess, on like messaging or you could critically call it propaganda, if it gets too out of line with reality of saying, no Europe's the best. This is all, everything's great. And we identify a trade-off there between, well, do you want to just focus on the message or actually focus on the material substance of what's going on – whether that's prosperity, whether that's personal freedoms, treatment of immigrants, et cetera. 

So, we also identify that soft power kind of helps these other types of power, but it also needs them, right? Like there's a persuasive power of prosperity. Of actual freedoms. And so, we say that, you know, Europe can't just sort of narrowly try to tailor its messaging without actually addressing some of these deeper structural problems. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
So, if I understood it correctly, you recommend that Europe should recalibrate its power triangle and seek to strike a roughly equal balance between military and economic power and the soft power, while pursuing greater autonomy from the US. That's how I understood it from the study.

And you call that scenario the "Super Switzerland", which I like that term. Can you explain what you mean by that? You calibrate a little bit between, I think, scenario three and four, I assume, what you just outlined, correct? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, I would definitely encourage people to read the report. I realise it's difficult to describe a chart on a podcast. Page 42 for those who have the PDFs in front of them. (laughs) 

But yeah, the idea basically is we kind of outlined four different scenarios, which hinge on how independent of the US, Europe is, and its relative focus on hard versus soft power. And what we then advocate is, I give them all different S names, you know, it's a sidekick or Sparta, spokesperson or stargazer.

And for catchiness sake, we say the ideal is actually a Super Switzerland. Like I said, encourage everyone to read that report. But the idea there is that while the EU shouldn't kind of just remain like the sidekick of the US, it doesn't need to overly antagonise the US either. It should have a kind of degree of independence. And it shouldn't just double down on purely military power either. That's the kind of the Sparta approach. Rather, there should be a roughly equal balance, as you say, and a kind of healthy degree of independence.

For the sake of readability, we call that "Super Switzerland". The idea not being like it should emulate every Swiss policy. But that the Swiss have a very strong economy, strong cultural pull, but also a strong military for a country of the size. Like they can kind of, you know, handle themselves on the world stage.

And they're able to strike alliances or agreements with countries on a kind of, on a basis that suits their interests and without kind of, like I said, overly going down the like the naive role of having basically no functioning military, but also not abandoning your whole kind of welfare state and cultural appeal just for the sake of militarisation. And so, we kind of see Europe as the kind of adopting Super Switzerland, the sort of like you have a continent that can defend itself that still prizes culture. And that is not kind of overly dependent on any foreign power, whether that's Russia, China.

 

Amira El Ahl:
So, the restraints and the tensions that you just explained, what do they tell us about the international environment that Europe is operating in today? And do you think that considering these tensions, Europe and Germany could really realistically fill this gap that the US has produced? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah. You know, as a lot of people have remarked on, I mean, there is obviously rising international tensions. You see this phrase thrown around a lot, you know, geopolitics is back, et cetera.

And, we wouldn't disagree with any of that. Of course, the world has become a lot more crisis-ridden in the last decade or two. The benefit of that in a way is that like crisis kind of reveals contradictions or it brings things out that maybe have been able to fly under the radar for a while. And those are those four tradeoffs I specified earlier is, these kinds of contradictions or tensions have always been there. You maybe saw this like that first one about Atlanticism versus universal principles and flare up say like during the Iraq war. Now that kind of dies down. Obama gets elected. People forget about that. But this the severity of this crisis now has kind of forced a lot of these tensions and contradictions into really sharp relief.

And so obviously that's difficult. The crisis management is hard. At the same time, there is a kind of benefit of actually being able to see the world more clearly now – ideally that kind of forcing and honest reckoning with the various policy choices that that are facing Europe.

And yeah, like it's not, you know, filling a gap, right? It's maybe not the best way to put it. I know we use that language ourselves, but we actually kind of push back on it in the report and show why it's more complicated than that. But there is definitely an opportunity for Europe to step in here.

And that's as both on the narrative level with the kind of there's no longer the superpower espousing these in many cases, still quite appealing notions of democracy and human rights, et cetera. And so, Europe is able to actually get that message out there. But as I specified earlier, it has to live up to that at home as well, because people are very able to see contradictions, especially now, where you can get immediate video from any country.

If there's some sort of abuses going on in that country, it's just much more easy to point out hypocrisy than it used to be. Europe needs to get that message out there but also live up to it at home. And in a way, we will be describing the report is the way Europe needs to actually move in the direction China has in terms of strategy, not in terms of human rights at home. China used to think we can just get our message out there and everyone will like us. And that didn't really work, right? Failed. And so, when we say Europe should be more like China in terms of its approach, not necessarily in terms of the content of governance, but rather they're kind of new understanding that, wait, like, economic power is an element of soft power. It's not just something that we want soft power in order to increase trade deals to boost the economy, or we have more money so we can invest it in soft power, but rather your economic prosperity and your material conditions of a given country are actually an element in increasing its appeal abroad. And China has really strongly done that, saying we don't care what type of government you have, like we're development, we're infrastructure. And that has a soft power to it.

And so, if Europe can sort of take that approach of wielding the material realities in the country to a kind of narrative, that's what we mean about adopting more that approach. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
So, more of a pragmatic approach, probably, to take that. Looking at the time, I have to ask you, may I find a question. Although this is so interesting, I'd love to listen to you more, but everybody can read the report, and I'll tell you guys where to find it later.

But let me ask you my last question. What could a coherent European message be? Like, after all that you, you know, laid out and pointed out. And how can cultural institutions like the ifa, the Goethe Institute or the British Council and the Institute Française and France contribute to this? Because you've also mentioned them a lot before.

 

Edward Knudsen:
Yeah, absolutely. We really identify the core strengths of Europe. I mean, there's, one of those would be obviously the kind of internal diversity within the country.

Obviously, there's a lot of different European countries, different languages, and that's a kind of clear appeal of Europe abroad. It also, I think, needs to work on a little bit more about being tolerant of diversity from other regions, which is, of course, kind of a hot button political issue in a number of countries. But I think when there's kind of sort of seeming a lack of tolerance that's something that gets perceived, like it's perceived abroad.

And so essentially, it's the tolerance and acceptance of diversity, the idea that freedom and prosperity can go together. And then that's the reality at home. And then kind of leveraging that abroad to say, “Look, like the things we're doing here, they work, right? This isn't just words.”

And so, it goes back to that point I made a few times about linking the actual on-the-ground reality to that messaging. And in a way, it's a lot of it's the message that's worked before for Europe. A lot of these countries have been democracies for a long time. And so, in some ways, it's kind of going back to what's worked in the past.

Of course, you need some kind of changes in that respect, whether that's coming to terms with colonial legacies or other forms of exclusion. But overall, leveraging the different viewpoints within the continent as a strength rather than a weakness. We often hear that Europe needs to speak with one voice in the kind of international policy sense. And maybe there's an element of truth to that for kind of one unified message, like I said.

However, the diversity of viewpoints I think is really important, whether that's the kind of newer EU countries or Northern versus Southern Europe, et cetera. That's something that should be kind of really clear to outsiders that there's not this kind of hegemonic or monolithic European way of doing things. Rather, you know, there's this sort of internal tolerance for diversity. We find that really important. In addition to jump-starting the economy as a kind of key way of showing that these ideals actually work. Authoritarianism doesn't produce greater wealth in the market and so on. 

And the institutions, to your last point, there's already a good deal of coordination between those, whether that's through EUNIC or other means. And I think there should be kind of coordination on this, like this broader picture. Of viewing themselves as part of foreign policy in a sense. We very much support the independence of these institutions. I think, just kind of an honest assessment though, right? If you're funded by a foreign ministry, you're probably somehow involved in foreign policy. I think that admitting and acknowledging that while preserving independence is important and kind of coordinating on this kind of core message that I laid out.

But then, also doing a lot of the great work they already do. We are not trying to tell the ifa or Goethe Institute how to change their day-to-day operations at all. Like, there is a lot of great work that's out there. Sometimes it's just maybe kind of boosting digital presence to increase awareness of coordinating better with other institutions, both within the country, and in other countries. About the kind of most effective way to pursue this goal, which, like we said, you want to see some kind of direction, some kind of strategy, some kind of unified approach, but by no means should all these institutions be marching in lock step. You know, that's totally counter to what we identify as Europe's main. 

 

Amira El Ahl:
Yeah. And maybe one last thing, because as you said earlier, it's important to bring about the point of freedom and prosperity and to be in one, you know, to speak with one voice and to kind of point out the ideals that Europe has.

But I think with this, as you said, like admitting things and also be clear about the past, I guess, especially in the Global South, it's quite important to see the double standards. Europe has a legacy or a history of colonialism and especially in the Global South. It's very important to address also these things and be open about this and transparent.

And in order to then get the point across that things have changed and like to really speak with one voice about freedom and prosperity and have this clear appeal also in the Global South, correct? 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Absolutely. And to not have this easy to point out hypocrisy, right? I think that's a very important thing. And there's obviously been a lot of debates in Germany recently about how it's sort of processed the legacy of the Holocaust and so on.

And then if that's perhaps like lopsided and how it's implemented in some ways. But typically, I think that's been a great strength of Germany. It's something people say abroad, Germany has come to terms with its past. That's really great. And I think you see kind of more reticence about doing that with colonial history.

But what I think Germany does show is that it almost sounds, you don't want to sound overly instrumental about it, but like it can actually be a kind of good like nation branding opportunity to be like, no, we're the countries that sort of come to terms with this. We're sending back the artifacts from the British Museum or whatever it is. Like, I think I think that kind of thing actually has a lot of persuasive power rather than, oh no, we need to we need to hide this.

We need to not discuss this. I think that openness actually is something that really does appeal to a lot of people. I definitely encourage European countries to not be shy about some of the darker moments in their past and then kind of seeing that maybe as an opportunity to actually increase appeal by addressing them rather.

 

Amira El Ahl:
Absolutely. Honesty and openness goes a long way. So, right. Thank you so much, Edward, for your time, for your insights. And it's been a pleasure talking to you. I wish we had more time in this podcast.

Thank you for being with us. 

 

Edward Knudsen:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation.

 

Amira El Ahl:
Thank you. That brings us to the end of this episode. If you would like to read the report by Edward Knudsen, please take a look at the show notes for this episode. There, you will find a link to "Domination Without Hegemony? The Emerging Contest to Fill the US' Soft Power Vacuum" And it's really worth a read. Please take a look at the show notes.

And a few episodes ago, I spoke with Professor Carlo Marsala about the European security policy and soft power. So, if you would like to learn more about this topic, I highly recommend listening to that episode as well. 

You can find this and over 80 other episodes on foreign cultural policy, wherever you listen to your podcasts on Spotify, Apple Music or Deezer.

You can also find out more about ifa and our projects on our social media channels. On Instagram, you will find the profile with the handle at ifa.de and on LinkedIn, as ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. If you have any questions or comments about the cultural mediators, please send us an email to podcast@ifa.de. With that, I say goodbye.

My name is Amira El Ahl. 
Thank you so much for listening and bye-bye.