In a world of fracturing alliances, information warfare, and declining institutional trust, soft power is no longer a diplomatic luxury — it is a strategic necessity. Yet most governments still treat it as an afterthought: underfunded, poorly measured, and disconnected from national security priorities.

This needs to change. The countries that will navigate the coming decades of geopolitical instability most successfully are those that treat their soft power assets — media, culture, education, and international broadcasting — with the same rigour they apply to defence spending.

Why soft power matters more than ever

Hard power — military capability and economic leverage — remains essential. But its limitations have never been more visible. Conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea have demonstrated that military force alone cannot secure influence, build coalitions, or shape the narratives that determine international legitimacy.

Soft power fills these gaps. As Joseph Nye — the Harvard political scientist who coined the term in 1990 — defined it, soft power is the ability to shape the preferences of others through attraction rather than coercion or payment. It rests on three pillars: a nation's culture, its political values, and its foreign policies. When these are seen as legitimate and credible, they produce attraction — and attraction produces influence without the costs and risks of force.

Nye's framework has never been more relevant. When a country's soft power is strong, its diplomats negotiate from a position of cultural authority, its businesses expand into welcoming markets, and its strategic interests are advanced by willing partners rather than reluctant ones.

The geopolitical landscape has made this more urgent, not less. As the rules-based international order comes under pressure, the nations that can credibly communicate their values, build cultural bridges, and maintain trusted information channels will hold disproportionate influence.

The measurement problem

One reason governments underinvest in soft power is that they struggle to measure it. Nye himself has acknowledged this challenge, noting that while soft power resources can be identified, converting them into desired outcomes is neither automatic nor straightforward. Defence budgets produce tangible assets — aircraft carriers, missile systems, troop deployments. Soft power investments produce outcomes that are diffuse, long-term, and difficult to attribute.

But difficult to measure is not the same as impossible. A serious approach to soft power measurement should consider:

• Reach and penetration: How many people in target markets are exposed to a nation's media, cultural products, and educational offerings? International broadcasting audience data, student enrolment figures, and cultural export volumes provide concrete baselines.
• Sentiment and perception: How is a nation perceived in key markets? Regular, rigorous polling in strategically important countries — not vanity surveys — can track shifts in favourability, trust, and cultural affinity over time.
• Diplomatic leverage correlation: Do periods of strong soft power engagement correlate with more favourable diplomatic outcomes? Treaty negotiations, trade agreements, and coalition participation can be mapped against soft power investment cycles.
• Counter-narrative effectiveness: In an era of state-sponsored disinformation, how effectively does a nation's soft power infrastructure counteract hostile narratives? Speed of response, credibility ratings of national broadcasters, and social media engagement metrics all offer measurable indicators.

None of these metrics is perfect in isolation. But taken together, they provide a framework that is far more rigorous than the current approach in most governments, which amounts to little more than anecdotal reporting and periodic reviews.

Getting value for money

The challenge is not simply to spend more on soft power — it is to spend more intelligently. Several principles should guide governments seeking better returns:

Invest in credibility, not propaganda. The most effective soft power assets are those that are trusted precisely because they maintain editorial independence. The BBC World Service, for example, derives its influence from its reputation for impartial reporting — a reputation that would be destroyed if it became a mouthpiece for government policy. Governments that understand this invest in the conditions for credibility rather than trying to control the message.

Think in decades, not electoral cycles. Soft power compounds over time. The British Council, the Goethe-Institut, and the Alliance Française did not build their influence in a single parliament. Governments that cut soft power budgets during austerity and restore them during crises are systematically destroying value. Consistent, long-term investment is essential.

Coordinate across institutions. Most countries scatter their soft power efforts across foreign ministries, culture departments, broadcasting regulators, and education bodies with little strategic coordination. The most effective approach treats soft power as a national capability that requires the same kind of cross-government strategy as defence or intelligence.

Target strategically. Not all audiences are equally important. Soft power investment should be concentrated where it can have the greatest strategic impact — in countries where alliances are forming, where economic relationships are deepening, or where hostile narratives pose the greatest threat.

The cost of inaction

The countries investing most aggressively in soft power today are precisely those seeking to reshape the international order. China's media expansion across Africa and Southeast Asia, Russia's information operations in Europe, and Gulf states' investments in sports, media, and cultural institutions are not vanity projects — they are strategic investments in influence.

Western democracies that fail to match this investment — not in kind, but in strategic seriousness — risk finding themselves outmanoeuvred not on the battlefield, but in the far more consequential arena of global perception and trust.

Nye argued that the most effective foreign policy combines hard and soft power into what he termed "smart power." The governments that master this combination — backing credible soft power institutions with strategic investment, rigorous measurement, and long-term commitment — will hold advantages that no amount of military spending alone can provide. Soft power is not soft. It is, when properly invested in and measured, one of the hardest and most durable forms of national strength available. The governments that recognise this will be the ones best positioned to protect their interests in the unstable decades ahead.