Thread on soft power, subversion and the Ayatollah: As I’ve said earlier – soft power is often wrongly defined. Soft power is NOT cultural exports. Power is the ability to influence another’s policies or actions in order to serve one’s interest. Bollywood, K-pop etc.
So then what is soft power?
It is the spread of an ideology such that other states and societies redefine their own interests. It is like a parasite that takes over the host and makes it pursue policies to achieve the normative goals of that ideology, not national interests.
Only two ideologies have that power now – liberalism, and Islamism. Christianity did in the colonial era, but lacks that power anymore. The legitimising ideologies of imperial power projection now are only these two.
The techniques of soft power use are the same in both –
1. Set the ideology as a normative goal
2. Claim that the current state structure is illegitimate since it doesn’t pursue that goal (“Democracy/ secularism in danger!” “Islam in danger!”)
3. Hence stoke rebellion and legitimise foreign intervention to save what is supposedly in danger.
Who does this is a symbiotic relationship of true believers (of liberalism and Islamism) and cynical actors who use this as a way to also pursue national interests (say of US or Iran respectively).
The Iranian regime is a revisionist player which seeks to gain power by subverting other regimes, especially in West Asia, by the use of Islamism as soft power. “look we are standing up for global Islam/ Ummah whereas KSA, UAE, Egypt are not”.
This way they can rile up the Islamic street in those countries and create revolutions or at least subversion and weaken their rival regimes, apart from hurting their enemies and rivals with terrorism – such as with Hezbollah or Hamas/ Brotherhood.
To counter soft power it doesn’t need much state capacity, but does need a lot of state *clarity*. The actions have to do with information and intellectual ecosystems, clamping down on use of non state actors (ranging from NGOs, all the way to terror outfits) etc.
Given India’s unique situation – we have to be aware about both forms of imperial soft power, and vigilant about how we counter each of them, particularly since both are in a tactical alliance in India and our neighbourhood in the subcontinent.
(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @Akshay_VAK on September 17, 2024, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)
