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Aug
24

James Lindsay: ‘Biden’s foreign policy is not simply a restoration’

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In this Eastern Focus interview, dr. James M. Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), explains that Joe Biden sees his core global challenge as being less about promoting democracy than preserving it. 

What would you expect to fundamentally change under a Biden administration in terms of foreign policy vision? To use the vivid image of the book you co-authored together with Ivo Daalder – “the Empty Throne” – will we be present at a restoration? To what foreign policy traditions are we going back?

I would frame President Biden’s approach like this: He is looking to recover a tradition of American leadership in the world that Donald Trump turned his back on. From Truman to Obama, American presidents believed that American leadership served not just its own interests, but the interests of others. The United States led the creation of a world order that Americans believed advanced and protected their interests even as it helped others. Donald Trump’s America First rejected that idea, arguing instead that America’s engagement in the world produced costs that greatly exceeded any benefits. That’s why America First morphed into America alone. 

From Truman to Obama, American presidents believed that American leadership served not just its own interests, but the interests of others.

Joe Biden, like almost all post WW2 presidents, believes in the virtue of American leadership. But it is important to note that his foreign policy is not simply a restoration. He understands that “you can’t step into the same river twice”. Things have changed. You can’t ignore the fact that we had 4 years of America First foreign policy and America’s relations with many of its closest friends, allies and partners have been damaged and are in need of repair. The Biden team – composed of serious, seasoned, experienced foreign policy hands – understands that they face a very different situation compared to when they were last in government. They know that America’s diplomatic relationships need to be repaired. They also recognise that many US partners worry that a Biden presidency will represent only a temporary return to a traditional US foreign policy. An old saying applies here: Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Can Biden deliver on his agenda and on his promises? A skeptic can reasonably say that Americans voted for Donald Trump once, so what’s to stop them from voting for him again?

‘The policy of engagement with China hasn’t worked’  

Let’s discuss the different strands existing in the Democratic Party vis-à-vis the great power competition. In the end the return of the great power competition has become a core feature of the contemporary international relations. It is no longer the 1990s or 2000s. The Democratic Party is no longer the one of the 1990s or 2000s. For example on Asia in particular “there is a new generation that emerged” in the words of Eric Sayers that displays a competitive-minded approach to Beijing (and here I would include Kurt Campbell, Ely Ratner, Kathleen Hicks, Mira Rapp-Hooper. 

When we talk about the Democratic Party we first need to recognise that there are divisions within the party, including on foreign policy with splits between doves and hawks. Second, for many and perhaps most Democrats, job number one is not foreign policy, it is not restoring American leadership abroad. Instead it is about getting America’s domestic house in order. Indeed, many Democrats see two reasons why a successful foreign policy depends on fixing domestic problems.  One is to persuade the American public that investments and actions overseas are worthwhile and not detracting from success at home. That is why the Biden Administration quite consciously uses the phrase a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’. The second reason is that America’s ability to lead has historically rested on American power, on the appeal of American values (soft-power), and on a reputation for competence. The United States was always the can-do country. It was the country where the president said on the Inauguration Day that in 10 years we would land a man on the moon and then did just that. It is safe to say that over the last dozen years the reputation of the US as a can-do power, as a competent power, has taken a blow. That happened first with the financial crisis in 2008-2009 and then again with the bugled response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For many and perhaps most Democrats, job number one is not foreign policy, it is not restoring American leadership abroad. Instead it is about getting America’s domestic house in order.

At the same time there has been a sea change in foreign policy thinking over the last decade among both Democrats and Republicans. A consensus has formed in Washington that the policy of engagement with China hasn’t worked.  Visions of what the engagement policy was supposed to produce varied, but the core belief was that we would invite China into this rules-based international order and that China would over time benefit from joining, realise the benefits, and then become a responsible stakeholder. The conclusion today– and this is a broadly held view in the United States – is that this bet didn’t pay off. We have witnessed particularly since Xi Jinping came to power a more assertive China that is seeking not to blend into the existing order, but to revamp it in a number of ways.  Beijing’s engagement with that order, particularly on trade, has been strategic in the sense of exploiting the rules to benefit China economically, while not actually embracing them.  This view of Chinese behaviour is something that unites the American firsters with a Biden return to American leadership. So the question becomes one of how you act on this changed perception. 

Donald Trump’s answer was America First: we exert our power, we are the most important economy in the world and we can force China to bend to our demands. After 4 years the results are in on that experiment, and I would suggest it failed. China is stronger because the basic premise of Trump’s strategy of an America that can do it alone was wrong. Trump ran against allies saying they didn’t do enough, and then pursued a foreign policy which asked the US to deliver more. It didn’t work. So the Biden response is to work with our friends, partners and allies to come up with common responses to actions by China, whether in the military sphere, the economic sphere or on human rights. This is easier said than done, because even if you are going to get people to agree that China needs to be deflected or challenged, you get disagreements over where it should be challenged, how it should be challenged, who should do the challenging and who should foot the bill.

Biden argument isn’t we can contain China, but to persuade the Chinese not to do things to challenge our interests and our values. So the policy is not containment, but challenging Chinese behaviour that violates international norms.

It is certainly the case that the Biden foreign policy is going to look different than Trump’s on a number of issues – think climate change, human rights – but in other areas it is going to be similar. Of course not in tone. We’ve left behind the time when foreign policy is made by tweets at 3 a.m., we’ve left behind the time when senior administration officials disagree publicly over what the policy is, and we’ve left behind the time when the president makes foreign policy on the fly. Now we have a more disciplined, coherent, methodical administration. But the premise remains that China remains the challenge. We need to be very careful here. The Biden argument isn’t we can contain China, but to persuade the Chinese not to do things to challenge our interests and our values. So the policy is not containment, but challenging Chinese behaviour that violates international norms. We see that when we are talking about Taiwan, freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea, and China’s human rights abuses. In this context the big question becomes – can the U.S. marshal sufficient support from its traditional friends, allies and partners? 

But in these diplomatic efforts it is not just what the US does that matters. What others do also matters, particularly the Chinese. And they are clearly following a strategy of divide and rule that seeks to prevent Biden from building a coalition of states that will pressure China.

‘Reaganism doesn’t fit the situation the US finds itself in today’

Are we on the verge of a paradigm change or rethinking in terms of the role of state/government domestically? A Reagan in reverse? Or a Rooseveltian New Deal 2.0? Trillions will be spent on infrastructure, social benefits, green economy. Not long ago, the national debt used to be understood as the biggest threat to the US national security. Are you worried by the skyrocketing debt levels? Isn’t this spending spree financed through a large deficit a danger for the US strategic solvency?

It’s too early to say whether we will talk about Biden’s presidency as we do about Reagan’s or FDR’s. President Biden certainly hopes to usher in a paradigm shift at home even as he reinvigorates the US approach to the world abroad. Americans have lived for four decades under the echoes of Reaganism and its insistence that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.“ Reagan prefaced that claim, however, with the words “in the present crisis.” Biden and his supporters argue that whatever the wisdom of Reagan’s advice four decades ago, it doesn’t fit the situation the US finds itself in today. Forty years of disdaining government action has left America’s infrastructure in tatters, weakened its social safety net, and accelerated economic inequality. The solution, especially during a pandemic, cannot be turning to the same set of failed policies. Rather, government must act, and it must act boldly.

Of course, big actions come with big price tags. Growing public debt is a concern, even if deficit hawks have been wrong for decades in insisting that fiscal ruin lies just around the corner. And for all the talk about Biden’s spending plans, it is worth remembering that the US national debt jumped by more than a third on Donald Trump’s watch while  America’s pressing infrastructure and social needs went unaddressed. 

Forty years of disdaining government action has left America’s infrastructure in tatters, weakened its social safety net, and accelerated economic inequality. The solution, especially during a pandemic, cannot be turning to the same set of failed policies. Rather, government must act, and it must act boldly.

Biden’s argument is that the greater risk at the present moment is doing too little than too much. That is a bold bet to make. If it pays off, the US economy will grow faster, making the debt easier to carry, solving a lot of domestic problems along the way, and putting US foreign policy on firmer footing. If the bet fails, then the national debt could pose a future danger. But should the US should ever reach that day of financial reckoning, a succession of presidents and Congresses who ducked America’s fiscal challenges rather than address them would need to share in the blame. 

While there is a new awareness on the disruptive rise of China, including in projecting its power and influence in Europe through companies, strategic assets and regional formats, there is no particular hurry in embracing a great power competition mindset in Europe. The recent investment accord with China is a case in point. What are implications for the transatlantic relationship? Do you see any potential strategic convergence between the Europe and the US in counterbalancing Chinese influence and projecting a common euro-Atlantic front?

I always worry about making generalisations about Europe. Europe has a robust set of countries that see some things alike and see some things differently. My sense is that overall, many Europeans are reluctant to get caught up in a great power competition. They believe that if they can minimise their exposure that they will maximise their benefits. But Europeans will find it difficult to avoid choosing sides. At the end of the day there are some issues that they can’t avoid. There are a number of Chinese policies that do concern people in Europe: human rights, Hong Kong, climate change – where the contribution of the Chinese power plants is a huge part of the problem – or regional intimidation. There are also European concerns about China’s predatory economic policies, namely, that China doesn’t play by the rules of the game but rather uses the rules to exploit others and create dependencies. 

Many Europeans are reluctant to get caught up in a great power competition. They believe that if they can minimise their exposure that they will maximise their benefits. But Europeans will find it difficult to avoid choosing sides.

Some European leaders recognise that Europe has to confront the reality of China. But will Europe embrace the challenge? This will be influenced by several things: one is how well Europe is doing in tackling its own internal problems. 

Another is how well the US plays its hand. The reality is, much as we extoll the transatlantic relationship, it has been buffeted over the years by all kinds of spats–on trade, the Iraq War, and the Vietnam War to name a few. So disagreement among friends is not unknown or uncommon and we should not idealise the past. We never had a moment of pure consensus, there always have been divisions. One of the tests will be how well the Biden administration understands the current state of relations–how adept are they working with their counterparts in Europe? Part of the success there is going to require the US not only to ask others to do something, but for the US to be willing to listen and give something. 

Another factor to have in mind over the next 6 to 12 months is what is China going to do? Is Xi Jinping going to moderate his behaviour? One obvious strategy for a great power facing a potential opposing coalition is to create divisions in that coalition – whether by offering investments to Greece or the Czech Republic or negotiating favourable deals with the EU as a whole.

‘The West was built around the notion that we were democracies and that we shared several core beliefs’

Do you see the ‘alliance of democracies’, in itself a very Wilsonian concept, at the core of the Biden vision the way to restore US leadership and defend the liberal international order? Is this a realistic construct? The theoretical democratic solidarity is often trumped by pragmatic commercial interests. 

The conversation we are having on Joe Biden’s call for a summit of democracies suggests that democracies working together is a novel idea.  I would argue that for the last 75 years, the United States has led an informal league of democracies. The commitment between the United States and Europe, the transatlantic relationship, was never simply about shared interests. It was also about shared values and shared governmental approaches. This is not to say that NATO always had countries that were democracies – the outliers were for a time countries like Greece, Portugal or Spain. 

But the general thrust of the West was built around the notion that we were democracies and that we shared several core beliefs: first, allowing people to change who governs them is a fundamental, universal value; two, it is the best way to arrange public affairs; three, we have an obligation to enable others to enjoy the benefits of democratic government. To me this is not something far-fetched, it is something we’ve been doing all along. We’ve been engaged in working with our fellow democracies on a whole range of issues.

The commitment between the United States and Europe, the transatlantic relationship, was never simply about shared interests. It was also about shared values and shared governmental approaches.

There is also this naïve assumption that you can only have a universal organisation like the UN, or a condominium of great powers like the Congress of Vienna, or regional organisations. The reality is that you can have a multiplicity of approaches. There is nothing wrong with having different forums, in part because you are trying to mobilise different people around different issues. I don’t accept this technocratic approach in which we have neat organisational lines and a hierarchy.

I will note that the importance of thinking about ourselves as being democracies is that it reminds us – whatever differences we have over digital taxes, subsidies, and the like – is that we share a fundamental commitment to a way of governing ourselves that we should not lose sight of. There is a tendency in human affairs to let small details take away from understanding what your common humanity is. It is important for us to work together. 

Organisations remind people of common interests or create them. When China goes about selling the BRICs it is consciously trying to create a conception that these countries – different in so many ways in terms of economic interests, culture and political systems – share something in common and can thereby forge some common bases of action. That same logic applies even more strongly to building around the democratic core. It is more a philosophy that we need to recognise that as democracies, for all the differences that we might have on some particulars, we share core assumptions about the world and the international order.

‘It is hard to argue that US foreign policy interests would be better served by abandoning a commitment to democracy’

Is it too much to say that there are echoes of a Truman-esque moment in terms of US grand strategy? And I am thinking here to the emphasis of democracy vs. autocracy as an inflection point and as the contest of our times. The interim NSS guidance published in March talks in these broad terms and it suggests a grand strategy that aims at consolidating the democratic/free core. In the end, it was the core message that Biden himself projected during the recent Quad, G7 and NATO summits.

There are echoes of Truman’s foreign policy in Biden’s. Today, as then, the United States finds itself embroiled in a great power competition. Today, as then, that peer competitor insists that its political and economic model is superior to democracy and free-market capitalism. And today, as then, that peer competitor stirs alarm among many of its neighbours with its ambitions. 

There are, of course, also important difference between the world today and the world of the late 1940s. The US and Chinese economies are deeply intertwined, whereas the US and Soviet economies were essentially disconnected. Both Beijing and Washington might like to reduce their mutual interdependence, but that will be hard to do. As a result, each capital has important economic incentives to favour cooperation over conflict. 

Biden sees his challenge as being less promoting democracy than preserving it. That is why he has repeatedly framed his task as leading “the world in fighting to defend democracy.”

Another important difference is that democracies are far more common today than they were seven decades ago – and they have shown that they can prosper. True, we have witnessed a significant democratic regression over the past dozen years, including in the US, as January 6 attests. So Biden sees his challenge as being less promoting democracy than preserving it. That is why he has repeatedly framed his task as leading “the world in fighting to defend democracy.”

That task is easier to state than to accomplish. An immediate problem is the obvious deficiencies in America’s own democracy. It’s hard to lead a cause when others doubt your virtue. Beyond that, Washington’s ability to influence the success of democracies elsewhere has always been limited, and it has often sacrificed its democracy goals to secure other foreign policy ends. Biden is already confronting these limitations and trade-offs in places like Haiti, Myanmar, and Tunisia. Like many of his predecessors in the Oval Office, he will be criticised for fecklessness and hypocrisy because his rhetoric and actions won’t always align. But it is hard to argue that US foreign policy interests would be better served by abandoning a commitment to democracy. 

There is a major debate about Taiwan these days in both US and US alliance system in the Indo-Pacific (especially Japan). We’ve seen even calls of ending US strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan. To some extent the whole debate echoes the one that we’ve seen after WW2 about including/excluding South Korea in the perimeter of the American national security. And we know how that particular one ended. What has changed in the US perception and how important is Taiwan for the US security?

For all of the talk on Taiwan, US policy has not changed on a fundamental level and isn’t likely to change any time soon. The core principle, which goes back to 1979, is that the US adheres to a One China policy: the US does not regard Taiwan as an independent country. That is why the US doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Taipei. US relations with the island are governed instead by a piece of Congressional legislation – the ‘Taiwan Relations Act’– which essentially requires the US to support Taiwan and to work to ensure that any reunification with the mainland happens peacefully.  

But tensions have risen in recent years because of the confluence of two things. 

One is that Taiwan has emerged as a model of democratic evolution: from what had been an authoritarian system to a flourishing vibrant democracy that is not just successful in terms of elections but as a flourishing economy with incredibly competent leadership. Just look at how effective Taiwan  – despite its close ties with China – was in preventing the COVID-19 pandemic from upending its society. If the US is at one end of the spectrum with a flawed response to the pandemic, Taiwan gets the gold star as top of the class. 

How do you deter Beijing? What are the right steps to prevent an escalation in conflict? What steps should you avoid because they will accelerate a conflict? Sometimes acting can provoke.

The other element has been the increased aggressiveness of China. As Chinese rhetoric has increased and as Chinese actions have become more threatening – crossing the ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) and testing the Taiwanese defense perimeter – the question arose over whether the United States is sufficiently signalling its support for Taiwan. The Trump administration moved away from a 30 year policy of keeping official contacts at a low level and Beijing obviously reacted harshly to that. The United States also stepped up arms sales to Taiwan. I anticipate that the Biden administration will continue that policy. That said, the Biden administration, like all the American presidencies, seems set to abide by the One China policy. It will say that reunification should take place on peaceful terms, and in no way should China coerce, intimidate or force Taiwan into a reunification. Of course that raises a major question. Xi Jinping has intimated if not said outright that China may consider non-peaceful means for achieving reunification.  What will Washington do if China does move forcefully against Taiwan?One of the challenges for the US government is to figure out how to prevent that situation from happening. How do you deter Beijing? What are the right steps to prevent an escalation in conflict? What steps should you avoid because they will accelerate a conflict? Sometimes acting can provoke. On the other hand, not acting can invite aggression. Trying to find the sweet spot or the Goldilocks spot – something that is not too hot and not too cold, not too big and not too small – is a test of diplomatic skill. 

Dr. James M. Lindsay is senior vice president, director of studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is a leading authority on the American foreign policymaking process and the domestic politics of American foreign policy.

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May
06

A Question of Trust. Why is China not as sexy as Korea? A Romanian perspective

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The problem with China’s soft-power push is that, in Romania and some other CEE countries, it simply does not generate trust.

In spring 2018, a convenience store selling Korean and Japanese products opened in central Bucharest, behind one of the city museum’s buildings. The shop sells various foods produced in South Korea, including ramyeon, nori, frozen dumplings, spring rolls, kimchi, noodles, tofu, and even Korean ice cream. It also sells Korean cosmetics – from lipstick and eyeliner to aloe vera-based skin care from Jeju Island – and K-pop albums released by various artists, as well as memorabilia.

At the entrance, before picking up a shopping basket, the customer has to pass life-size cardboard effigies of the Bang Tan Boys/BTS, one of the most successful Korean boy bands. The shop is more than a minimarket; it is designed to resemble a convenience store in Seoul, South Korea. The shop also has a food court where customers can sit and enjoy a box of freshly prepared instant ramyeon while listening to K-pop songs. 

By the summer of 2019, the shop had become already a meeting point, a ‘third place’ for K-pop fans from Bucharest and travellers from other regions of Romania who were K-pop fans and had heard about the shop on vlogs, blogs and other social media groups dedicated to Korean popular culture. 

At the beginning of 2020, there were scores of Romanian language groups and pages on social media dedicated to Korean pop bands, idols, movies and movies stars, and blogs and vlogs with news on Korean music and dramas, as well as all things Korean, including food recipes, cosmetics and how they’re used. 

Several online shops opened delivering Korean food and cosmetics, while other online shops specialised exclusively in Korean cosmetics  or in K-pop band memorabilia and music albums which otherwise could not be found in the mainstream commercial outlets.

Pop culture is not only about fashion and music, but also about political ideas, freedoms or lack of them, experience, social and moral values that a group in a distant geographical location can choose, based on its local already-existing culture, to like, adhere to, trust, digest and internalise.

Moreover, several crowdsourced websites with Asian (but predominantly Korean) movies and dramas have acquired over 200,000 followers. Community members translate drama episodes into Romanian, in real time and for free, to support their passion for Korean actors and Korean culture. 

The popularity of the Korean Wave in Romania has also spotlighted other East Asian pop cultures, including Chinese. 

C-pop, just like K-pop, means billions of dollars: China has a self-sustaining entertainment industry. Chinese internet giant Tencent’s four music platforms – QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing – have a combined 800 million monthly users, compared to Spotify’s 207 million at the beginning of 2019 (Russell 2018). 

Moreover, Beijing has started to invest in foreign policy research, and is currently funding several doctoral programmes at British universities that have opened campuses in China in the past few years. The main focus of these programmes is to determine how audiences in the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative react to Chinese cinema and television and the political ideas included in the Chinese pop culture project. 

C-pop has not generated the same type of soft power effect as Korean pop culture – at least not yet. According to some insiders, this is because Beijing has not yet been that interested in promoting its entertainment products outside the East and South-East Asian region, where they are already a hit (Kelley 2019). 

However in the rest of the world, where Korean popular culture is gaining ground and is able to influence foreign societies by creating a largely positive and desirable image of Korea, markets with Chinese noodles and dumplings are not becoming third places for groups of C-pop fans to put on Chinese make-up, sing Chinese pop songs and eat Chinese noodles. 

Nor do C-pop and C-drama fans gather in ‘We love China’ cultural groups to spread Chinese culture and language. Cultural activities like these have been directly backed by the Chinese state through its Confucius Institutes, but they have not won the hearts and minds of millions of people around the world. Neither have they won the hearts and minds of C-pop fans in Romania. 

So why does China have a hard time generating soft power in countries like Romania?

Soft is the new strong

In sociology, it was Pierre Bourdieu who first spoke of symbolic power, which finds its expression in cultural practices and forms which sustain unequal distribution of scarce resources (Swartz 2013). In Bourdieu’s view, power is not only a matter that should concern the political domain, but it is also linked to culture and economics, and it is present in all human relations; symbolic forms of power, capital, and violence sustain social hierarchies.

But in the case of states in the international system, the same symbolic forms of power, capital and violence, form political hierarchies. Bourdieu’s work was largely focused on the idea of the state as a holder of symbolic power on the domestic level. However, looking at the international system at any point in time, despite its de jure anarchic character, the symbolic power and capital of various states and non-state actors play a role in the de facto international hierarchic system that David A. Lake speaks of in Hierarchy in International Relations (Lake 2009). He argues that the world is made of patron/client bargained relations between dominant states that provide security or know-how and subordinate states in exchange for support or compliance.

In a decentralised world where it is increasingly easy for information to travel, the relations between states rest less on coercion and more on attraction, common values and popular culture – on soft power, rather than hard power, as American political scientist Joseph Nye, Jr. argued in his book Bound to Lead (1991), a critique of realism in international relations. 

Later he developed a theory of soft power as a means of success in international relations in a changing world where attractiveness gradually becomes more important than coercion (2004). 

According to Nye, states do not only resort to military or coercive diplomacy to exert influence or dominate other states and international institutions, but they can also ‘charm’ them into supporting certain policies or actions at the international level, or simply in order to pacify them. 

His theory is based largely on the United States and its influence over numerous states at a time of liberalism when coercion had become frowned upon in international relations (Nye 2011). 

Nye argued at the time that pop culture in itself is not necessarily soft power; soft power, he says, rests on a country’s culture, the legitimacy of its foreign policy and political values. The more its values are universal and globally shared, and its domestic policies in tune with the global trend, the greater the country’s potential (Nye 2004, p. 11). The more parochial a culture (including its political ideas and social rules), the less potential it has for soft power, even if its cultural goods are well received outside its borders. 

South Korean political scientist Lee Geun (2009) realised that his own country was being cited more and more as a model of soft power at the dawn of the 21st century, and developed a theoretical framework based on Nye’s concept. 

Lee makes the actual connection between soft power resources and the power conversion mechanism, and insists on the power of ideas, but also on the fact that soft power is more than just public diplomacy, development aid and planned cultural exchanges (Lee 2009, p. 207): it is also about changing the thinking framework of a recipient community and/or society. 

Soft resources, which he defines as ideas, images, theories, know how, education, culture, traditions or national and global symbols, are applied to a recipient in order to change their behaviour. But they only produce soft power when the attractiveness or fear they produce on a short term becomes ‘common sense’ in the recipient group/community/society, changes the way of thinking and the interpretative frameworks, and produces long-term effects. 

And, based on tens of interviews of consumers of Korean and Chinese pop culture, I argue that the key in whether pop culture becomes soft power or does not is trust.

The K in soft power 

In Korea’s case, the K is in everything that makes up the ‘Korean Wave’ – K-pop, K-drama, K-beauty, all of which are anchored in Korea. 

K-pop has been mentioned by various political scientists as a manifestation of soft power (Watson 2012) (Kim & Hogarth 2013). The association of terms is well enough established in the literature, and has grown to be a model for other East Asian countries, including China and Japan.

The penetration of Korean pop culture, especially K-pop and K-dramas, began with the East Asian markets in the late 1990s, right after the Asian Financial Crisis when the Korean economy was in shambles and the export of popular culture seemed a resource that needed to be exploited (Iwabuchi & Chua 2008). 

The rise of the ‘Korean Wave’ in the new millennium happened because of governmental and corporate support (Doobo 2008). The wave started in 1994 with government support for the domestic cinema production as a national strategic industry as an effect of the liberalisation of the media markets in East Asia and the success of US made cinema. Due to the tax incentive, the investments of chaebols (Korean business conglomerates) facilitated processes of capital accumulation in the media sector, but also attracted many talented human resources. 

The political ideas that Romanian K-drama and K-pop fans spread most when they speak of Korea are that the country is seen as a democracy, which shares freedom of speech and transparency, two values that are globally cherished and are also shared by Romanian society. It is a question of trust. 

At the same time, after the 1990s financial crisis, when Korea’s economy took a big hit and it prioritised its media industry, other East Asian countries also liberalised their media markets, making it easy for the Korean blockbusters to sell abroad and become a regional phenomenon.

By 2006, Korean media products were becoming widely consumed in East and South-East Asia and started to spread across the world (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008), creating a mass of fans that not only shared the consumption of Korean media products, but also the love for South Korea as a country.

In some cases, K-culture fans become political agents promoting South Korean nationalist ideas in their own home societies, spreading knowledge and normalising the ideas spread through K-culture. 

Irina Lyan (2019) points out that non-Korean Hallyu fans in Israel, for instance, often become the voices of South Korean nationalism. By looking at who participates in and what happens in events organised on Korea Day during 2000-2010, she found that it was the local non-Korean fans that celebrated the state’s national day and spread the culture, and took on the roles of experts and educators, and even of cultural ambassadors.

She calls the phenomenon fan-nationalism: fans are mobilised by the idea of promoting a positive image of Korea in their home societies.

I have found that this happens to some extent in Romania too. 

The experience on the demand side 

What exactly makes certain groups in a distant society be attracted to a popular culture like that of South Korea; and following Lee’s theory, how does this attractiveness become soft power?

This can only be achieved by looking at culture through the lens proposed by Richard Hoggart (1957), which includes not only music, entertainment and the arts in general, but also political ideas and social behaviours which, in an age of information, can become part of pop culture. 

Pop culture is not only about fashion and music, but also about political ideas, freedoms or lack of them, experience, social and moral values that a group in a distant geographical location can choose, based on its local already-existing culture, to like, adhere to, trust, digest and internalise. 

When discussing this process of transforming pop culture into soft power, it is also imperative to not only look at states, but also at the level of the individual and their immediate surroundings and social relations. 

The body is central to post-modern geopolitics

The human body is the first territory conquered by soft power, if you look at the matter from Foucault’s perspective. At about the same time Joseph Nye came up with the idea of soft power in international relations, Michel Foucault (1990) established a theory of biopower, as opposed to the idea of sovereign power, or the power over death which ruled over society until the French Revolution.

If sovereign power was exercised by states whose ultimate expression of power was the monopoly of capital force, then biopower in fact means power over life through regulatory controls which result in the biopolitics of the population. Foucault looks at the human being – le vivant – from the relationship between the body and the surrounding tools, spaces constraining and enabling physical or mental movements. The object of the power relationship becomes the living, due to mutations in social relations in modern times. 

However, Foucault believes that the state no longer needs to be an oppressive or coercive factor on living bodies, but can also charm them into submission.

Our bodies, all of us, are, therefore, central to post-modern geopolitics. Following Foucault’s idea, the body becomes a consenting object of soft power, remaining central to the new paradigm of geopolitics. 

Falling in love with a foreign country, at the individual level, becomes a manifestation of geopolitical power when the individual starts acting as a political agent in the interest of a foreign state by replicating political ideas and social norms in their home society. 

A five-stage apprenticeship – from Netflix to political embodiment

For most of the respondents interviewed, the journey starts with one K-drama they either found by accident on Netflix or another streaming service, or they get referred to by a friend who is already a consumer and acts like an expert in ‘Korean affairs’. They like one of the actors starring in the drama, they look for more information about the celebrity in the media and also on social media, and look for other dramas he/she starred in. 

Phase 1: ‘Alice in Wonderland’

“I really want to understand more what is actually happening to me. I started to watch a couple of weeks ago and I am already hooked. I simply think about it all day and want to escape in that world, which is super-colourful, with insanely beautiful people and where everything ends happily,” one of the interviewees explained.

Phase 2: Networking

When asked, fans said that most of their knowledge of South Korea comes from the dramas themselves and, although they are aware that reality might not be the same, they are still tempted by the Korean dream and want to be transported into that fantasy world. Many K-drama fans look for other fans on social media, join groups on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and they also join international communities.

Phase 3: Internalising the new culture

Fan group members also start using words they hear in movies when they speak to each other, or make up inside jokes with references to both the Romanian culture they have learned and embodied since childhood and the Korean popular culture they see in dramas. 

They call each other jeonha (‘majesty’ in Korean) the way they learned from historical dramas, or they say sarang-hae instead of ‘I love you’ to each other. 

They dress like K-drama characters, they order and wear Korean cosmetics, put on make-up the Korean way, they cook Korean food. 

The imitation can also go as far as making gestures considered polite in Korea, but adapting them to Romanian society. The culture they see and absorb from dramas becomes embodied in the way they relate to other people in their own society.

The K-culture consumed and metabolised from K-drama also impacts their physical and social bodies, as well as material culture: they bow to people when they say hello, or use both hands to offer an object, as is polite in Korean culture. 

Last but not least, the demand for Korean language classes has increased dramatically during the past ten years in Romania: Korean-language programmes in universities are receiving higher numbers of applicants, and some private universities have set up Korean-language classes with native teachers, regularly host Korean professors as guest lecturers, and send more students on exchange programmes to Korea. 

Phase 4: Experts on all things Korea

The first result of this embodied hybrid Korean popular culture in groups of fans in Romania is that they become agents who spread Korean cultural and social ideas, values, and become experts in everything Korean. 

While going through their lists of favourite actors, many of the fans interviewed (mostly women) became interested in Korean history and researched the characters portrayed by the favourite actors, read English-language Korean media and started looking for more in-depth information about government and society in the country. 

Romanian K-pop and K-drama consumers, especially if they visit Korea for a vacation or have studied for a few months in Korea, act like experts on Korean society and often explain it to friends. Several conversations I have had with K-drama and K-pop fans have turned into long hours of explainers on what Korean popular culture is about, social pressures in Korea, gender issues, expat issues, as well as the way the Korean government handled the coronavirus pandemic without imposing restrictions, as well as how the society reacts to corruption, the culture of protesting for labour rights, and the political class. 

However, when members of the Romanian fan base act like experts, it is the political ideas contained in the Korean popular culture that they first express about Korea and spread among friends and Romanian society in general, rather than their preferences in terms of music or dramas. 

Phase 5: Economic and political entrepreneurship 

After the K-drama and K-apprenticeship phase, some K-culture fans become Korea fans and seek to boost their link to Korea more than simply by reading and expressing their expertise and views and comparing their home society to that of Korea. 

Some become K-entrepreneurs: they establish businesses that sell Korean products (mostly food and cosmetics). Others become social and/or political entrepreneurs. 

Most countries use cultural diplomacy as a tool to spread their culture and their political messages to other states, but most of the cultural institutes are usually funded by governments, and are managed by their ministries of Foreign Affairs. South Korea does not need to advertise its cultural activities in Romania too much. 

The association that serves as a Korean cultural institute is founded and operated by Romanians who act as local cultural ambassadors: they organise cultural events such as Korean movie festivals (twice a year) with some backing from the Korean embassy, run stands at Asian cultural festivals around the year, offer Korean language classes and organise Korean speech contests or karaoke contests for K-pop fans. They also participate in events organised by the Korean embassy in Bucharest on various occasions, including Korea Day. They also publish a magazine about all things Korean. 

These activities, together with a number of personal blogs and the social media presence of many ‘experts in all things Korea’, promote and generalise the idea that South Korea is a “cool and interesting country”.

However, there is a catch. Not just any country with a huge entertainment industry can follow in South Korea’s steps. 

So why is China not that attractive? 

It is not really attractive to Romanians in particular; and it is indeed about the political culture that Beijing infuses its media content with – which it does too obviously for this particular audience. 

Most K-culture fans I interviewed and observed during months of research consumed both Chinese and Korean pop culture. However, in the case of most Chinese productions, they say they feel the intervention of the state-driven political propaganda and the government’s grip on social relations, as well as individual freedoms. 

The political ideas that Romanian K-drama and K-pop fans spread most when they speak of Korea are that the country is seen as a democracy, which shares freedom of speech and transparency, two values that are globally cherished and are also shared by Romanian society. It is a question of trust. 

“The fact that I know that China is not a democracy, and I know how people live in a Communist country, because we lived through that before 1989 in Romania makes me distrust Chinese movies to a certain extent,” one fan bluntly put it. 

Young K-pop fans explained that they felt that in the Chinese media they consumed there was a certain amount of Communist propaganda, conservatism and censorship which they defined as ‘a certain degree of fake’. They said that Korean products were closer to Western culture and they could identify more with them, especially because they did not feel there was any political infringement of individual liberty. 

They shared the idea that South Korean pop bands, despite the fact that they knew the artists are subjected to a strict regimen that is sometimes abusive, were not submitted to censorship by an explicit political actor (i.e. a government institution). “In the Chinese dramas, however cool the topics are, you just see people acting really awkward and naïve. Koreans are simply more genuine,” a 17-year-old respondent said.

The problem with China’s soft-power push is that, in Romania and some other Central and Eastern European countries, it simply does not generate trust. 

Most Chinese period dramas portray a mythical Chinese society, with fantastic heroes and well-designed costumes, Taoist cultivators of immortality, or historical heroes that conquer kingdoms. However, when in the middle of an episode of a drama about demi-gods and fairies such as Ashes of Love, one peripheral character says, “Don’t trust the fairies, they are as unreliable as Hong Kong”, an eastern European audience may not see it as a very good joke, but as a clear sign of state censorship. 

Western European consumers of Chinese movies, novels, videogames are more inclined to absorb the idea of mythical historical China as a great civilisation, and more readily dismiss the topics of authoritarianism, Communism and China’s human rights problems.

Western European interviewees who consume Chinese pop culture and who absorb cultural ideas much more quickly become fans of Taoism, and they begin to study the language and history – which also creates a more fertile ground for receiving political ideas and norms. In some Western societies the mythical representation of China as the world’s greatest civilisation in pop-culture (movies, music, web novels, animation, or video games) is a niche hobby which is more successfully accepted by the youth. 

As opposed to Eastern European consumers of mainland Chinese popular culture, Western European consumers of Chinese movies, novels, videogames are more inclined to absorb the idea of mythical historical China as a great civilisation, and more readily dismiss the topics of authoritarianism, Communism and China’s human rights problems.

But in the former Communist bloc, consumers of pop culture are already skilled at detecting state pressure on media and individual freedoms and can smell government enforced censorship from afar. In societies like Romania it is difficult for China to rely on its charm based on an image constructed on the idea of its mythical civilisation, because the trauma of having survived Communist rule is greater than the fascination for cosmeticised Chinese cultural products. The C-culture consumers who also admire the Chinese political model are a tiny minority in comparison with the K-pop and K-drama ‘armies’. 

References: 

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press.

Chua, Beng Huat, and Koichi Iwabuchi. 2008. East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 

Doobo, Shim. 2008. ‘The Growth of Korean Cultural Industries and the Korean Wave’ in East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave, by Chua Beng Huat and Koich Iwabuchi, 15-31. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1990. History of Sexuality. New York : Random House

Hoggart, Richard. 1957. The uses of literacy. Transaction publishers.

Holyk, Gregory G. 2013. ‘Paper Tiger? Chinese Soft Power in East Asia’, Political Science Quarterly 223- 254.

Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2010. ‘Globalization, East Asian media cultures and their publics.” Asian Journal of Communication 197-212.

Iwabuchi, Koichi, and Chua Beng Huat. 2008. “East Asian TV Dramas: Identifications, Sentiments and Effects.” In East Asian Pop Culture: Analyzing the Korean Wave, by Chua Beng Huat & Koichi Iwabuchi ed., 1-13. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Nye, Joseph Jr. 2004. Power in the Global Information Age: From Realism to Globalization. New York: Routledge.

Kim. 2016. “Korea’s Cultural Juggernaut is a Soft-Power Strategy Worth Copying’, National Interest, 14 August.

Kuwahara, Yasue. 2014. The Korean Wave. Korean Popular Culture in Global Context. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Lake, David A. 2009. Hierarchy and International Relations. Cornell University Press. 

Lee, Geun. 2009. ‘A theory of soft power and Korea’s soft power strategy’, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 205-2018.

Lyan, Irina. 2019. ‘Welcome to Korea Day’, International Journal of Communication 3764–3780. 

Lyan, Irina, and Nissim Otmazgin. 2019. ‘Fan entrepreneurship. Fandom, Agency, and the Marketing of Hallyu in Israel’, Kritika Kultura 289–307.

Nye, Joseph Jr. 1991. Bound To Lead: The Changing Nature Of American Power. New York: Ingram Publisher Services. 

Nye, Joseph. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs.Swartz, David L. 2013. Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals: The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Thu
Apr
22

Information wars and regime stability. How can nations respond?

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If civilians are engaged in conflict, then the solution can only come in a ‘whole-of-society’ approach, and not from government only.

Increasingly, as global competition steps up and technology affords ever more efficient ways of compelling the enemy into submission without firing a shot, we will continue to see information warfare being used more often and by a wider range of state and non-state actors. Since the very essence of such campaigns is to remain below the threshold of conflict – where their perpetrators may be identified and proportional response may be triggered – there will be no non-combatants. What is more, the civilian population will be the target of choice, because the modus operandi of ‘influence’, perhaps a more adequate name than ‘war’, campaigns is to turn the native populations, or part thereof, into unknowing accomplices/ domestic agents of the attacker, most often by inciting them to contest the very institutions tasked with preserving stability, continuity and legitimacy of the state. 

If civilians are engaged in conflict, then the solution can only come in a ‘whole-of-society’ approach, and not from government only. Quite on the contrary, the role of government is often a delicate one, since malign foreign influence seeks to deepen the mistrust that citizens already have in their own governments and in the very ability of the institutions of representative democracy to deliver on their mission. The most fragile balance to maintain, under the circumstances, is between countering information manipulation, and preserving information integrity and the freedom of expression.

The simple truth is that technology and communication have progressed at a rate unmatched by either human emotional and cognitive development, or adaptation of institutions. We remain unable to cope with information overload and speed, microtargeting and the pushing of all our emotional triggers without enormous effort.

To be clear, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as dis-/misinformation and manipulation are versatile weapons and they adapt to the target, and no definitive comprehensive answer yet. The simple truth is that technology and communication have progressed at a rate unmatched by either human emotional and cognitive development, or adaptation of institutions. We remain unable to cope with information overload and speed, microtargeting and the pushing of all our emotional triggers without enormous effort. This is why advocating that responsibility for facing this onslaught of emotionally – and bias- loaded information lies ultimately with the individual only to decide what is best for oneself hugely underestimates the toll that the information environment that we live in takes on our ability to cope. Similarly, institutions and democracy itself have not evolved to effectively deal with the challenge, while preserving fundamental principles: they remain slow, often hierarchical and bureaucratic, in a world that is increasingly horizontal, ad-hoc, and empowering for a whole new range of citizens.

That being said, there are a number of things to do – and fast – to limit the impact of information operations, while safeguarding democracy and civil liberties. They are grouped along an axis that goes from ‘detection’, to ‘damage limitation’ and ‘deterrence’ and involve two lines of action: Resilience and Response. The goal is both to equip societies to deal with the threat when it presents itself, and to take preventive measures to avoid it materialising at all, given that once falsified information has made it into the public space, damage has already been done. Hence, one of the main challenges is to get ahead of the game and pre-emptively reduce exposure to manipulation, rather than simply be reactive.

The difficulty of ‘detection’ derives from the competitive edge of information operations: they are often detected only after they have produced effects. Attribution, the determination of what constitutes the threshold for calling ‘an attack’ and what constitutes proportional response are equally challenging. All these decisions will of necessity be highly political, not just a military or technical matter. Yet, for effective ‘deterrence’ to work, one needs to increase the costs of carrying out information operations for the adversary; and for ‘response’ mechanisms to be activated, the ‘enemy’ needs to be clearly identified in national strategic documents, especially in cases where subversive behaviour is employed repeatedly and/ or with a manifest purpose.

Both detection and damage limitation (through building resilience) can improve if an ‘early warning’ system is put in place, by means of a self-assessment of permeability to information manipulation. Since foreign actors will use existing rifts, grievances and perception biases and aim to amplify them, the identification of such vulnerabilities will make it easier to plug the gaps before others can take advantage of them. That is not to say they will always be easy to address, since many are structural and closely linked with the overall resilience of state and/ or democracy: Critical thinking, scientific education and media literacy among the population, confidence in government, perceived inequality, corruption, intra-societal trust, etc. Also, singular measures are unlikely to significantly reduce the risk. Media literacy education is always good, but it’s a long-term endeavour and it is insufficient; debunking alone, rather than setting the facts straight, is likely to reinforce false narratives by repeating them, as well as to induce the belief that no one can be trusted – which plays right into the hands of manipulators.

To boost resilience, governments and societies need to focus primarily on those segments of the population who are not hardcore believers of fabricated ideas or ideology, but represent the ‘swing’ segment, who can be turned relatively easily by a malevolent actor, but can also be protected from manipulation with the right and timely actions.

To boost resilience, governments and societies also need to focus primarily on those segments of the population who are not hardcore believers of fabricated ideas or ideology, but represent the ‘swing’ segment, who can be turned relatively easily by a malevolent actor, but can also be protected from manipulation with the right and timely actions. To this end, the government needs to develop a robust strategic communications strategy (StratCom) and infrastructure, to make sure it has the upper hand on relevant communication and it is not only in a position to refute falsehood, but also persuade the public, in a manner that is both truthful, efficient and respectful of existing biases, without appearing to challenge the core beliefs and values of its constituency. Both StratCom and anti-disinformation measures need to be well-coordinated across relevant agencies, with a clear focal point, placed with an authority that has the constitutional and executive ability to direct other institutions. Too often, at present, government works in silos and information or intelligence-sharing is deficient.

More widely, cooperation among official institutions, the private sector, especially social media and online platforms, and civil society is key. On the one hand, the public will be better protected if these platforms help identify automated inauthentic behaviour online (trolls, bots) and through real-time fact-checking and flagging, limit the access of perpetrators to their audience, as well as their financial incentives. On the other hand, the capacity of platforms and of those using them to microtarget individuals and use emotional response triggers needs to be limited, while the transparency of algorithms and policies needs to be greatly improved. This is also the case with the ease of access and understanding of the user concerning any dangers he/she faces in operating the respective platforms, to empower the individual in relation to these companies. In so doing, the role of independent watchdogs is crucial, because these are, after all, private entities working for profit, while governments themselves can be seen as having a stake in the regulation and non-/disclosure of information. The principle that offline rules should naturally extend online is gaining widespread approval, but only international standards (such as the EU Code of Conduct, Five Eyes and other collective arrangements) will realistically make a difference in addressing a problem that is inherently a cross-border one and can easily elude a single state’s jurisdiction.

This article was first published as part of the series — Raisina Edit 2021.

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Sat
Nov
30

“Restore Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times”: Pro-democracy protests are once again ‘occupying’ Hong Kong

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Five years have passed since the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace’ civil disobedience campaigns that brought tens of thousands onto the streets of Hong Kong. Back in 2014, the protesters’ demands were focused on genuine universal suffrage for the election of the Special Administrative Region’s (HKSAR) Chief Executive (CE) and of the members of the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s Parliament.

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Tue
Aug
20

Democracy without institutions

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By Dragan Koprivica | Podgorica

What are the accomplishments of the European integration process in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia? Despite being at different stages, the process has still not been able to sufficiently affirm the constitutional commitment of the tripartite division of powers in these states and bring about an equal balance between them. Respect for this commitment is of fundamental importance for the operation of both the political and the overall social system.

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