The modern concept of international power allows tiny countries like Singapore to wield outsize influence over larger nations. Diplomat Tommy Koh shares how and why soft power is integral in making a country influential
Whether a country is influential or not does not depend only on its physical size, the size of its population, the size of its economy or its military power. It depends on something called soft power.
Soft power is the opposite of hard power. A country’s hard power consists of its military and economic power. Both can be used to pressure or coerce another country to comply with its wishes. Most countries possess both hard power and soft power. When Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State, she said that the US would use a combination of hard power and soft power in its diplomacy. She called it smart power.
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Soft power measures a country’s attractiveness to other countries, based on its prosperity, stability, good governance, equity and its values and ideals. Portland, a communications consultancy based in London, publishes the world’s only Soft Power Index. In its 2019 edition, seven small countries with populations of below 10 million were featured in the top 21 countries. This is surprising because a big country like China was ranked number 27. Another big country, India, didn’t make it to the list of 30 countries.
The small countries which made it to the top 21 were: Sweden (4) Switzerland (6), Norway (12), Denmark (14), Finland (15), New Zealand (17), Ireland (20) and Singapore (21).