Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, this is a fascinating subject for anyone who cares about international development and diplomacy. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has, as always, shown great personal commitment both with the presenting of ideas in the report and in his introductory remarks. The only regret I have is that his powers of persuasion, which are famous, have not extended to the Liaison Committee, which is supposed to approve the formation of an international affairs committee. However, he has 30 signed-up Members today and I think we should make a new approach.

While in principle I am a believer in soft power, I start with some scepticism because it is really yesterday’s concept. It was identified in the late 1980s at a time when, with the end of the Cold War, political theorists were looking for something new. Strange as it seems, we even then expected Russia to drop its military guard and entertain European concepts of soft power.

As Europeans we are all advocates of soft power. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, reminded us, that is how the founding fathers set up the new Europe, not only as an economic community but as a means of achieving peaceful development and of sharing democratic ideals. The European Union has for many years been quietly following its own concept of soft power through the Copenhagen criteria, especially the rule of law. The very process of enlargement and of the CSDP missions, especially in the Balkans, demonstrates this determination.

Having read the authoritative British Academy report last year, I wonder whether the canvas of soft power is so wide that it has lost its central purpose. If translated into government policy it becomes almost meaningless. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, had a similar thought that such reports, unfortunately, end up as a catalogue of alternative ingredients. I therefore sympathise with the Minister in having to cover the whole à la carte menu.

Soft power takes many forms, as we have heard. We all acknowledge the work of the BBC, the British Council and Commonwealth, which is rightly and widely admired. The point of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, was well taken, as was the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, about Russian propaganda. I am a huge fan of the BBC World Service and I have seen the British Council at work in Africa and south Asia. I know the potential value of the Commonwealth. The monarchy is itself a flagship of soft power. UK plc is another but it has not been mentioned a great deal. Of course, a lot of this is boasting, with some reason, that we are still a soft power superpower punching above our weight.

Having spent most of my time with NGOs I should like to deal mainly with the questions that arise when Governments engage in soft power through civil society, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I know that this Government, especially DfID, have tried hard to work with civil society. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, gave examples. The British Council does a lot in this area but I am not sure how far it has succeeded as far as the MoD is concerned. We do not need Clausewitz to understand that our armed services have to be interested in soft power, especially in education and training, as is explained on page 67 of the report, and in stabilisation. Phrases such as “building stability” and “upstream conflict prevention” entered the language when this Government started to confront the failures of military intervention with a new concept of peace building.

Before Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, we had at least one European success in Kosovo, in which it proved possible to push back conflict. Sierra Leone was another example. However, the resolution of both these conflicts required strong prior military intervention. Soft power remained in the rear.

In 2011 William Hague, Andrew Mitchell and Liam Fox announced a new Building Stability Overseas Strategy. They forecast that the ODA expenditure on fragile and conflict-affected states would increase to 30% by 2015. They also said that the resources of the joint conflict pool would increase to £1.1 billion over the spending review period. The ODA proportion of the budget was also due to rise to 65%.

In the context of this debate, that has been a considerable advance towards soft power. Learning from Afghanistan became a watchword and an opportunity for the Government to move beyond their own joined-up strategy into working more closely with civil society and organisations with direct experience of conflict prevention. I recognise the critical value of young volunteering and leadership training identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. My noble friend Lord Janvrin also used the words “nurture and support”. One expert from the Institute of Development Studies has argued that three issues raised by this strategy still need to be addressed:

“The tension between impact … and upstream conflict prevention; … The meaning of stabilisation in upstream conflict prevention”,

and:

“The lack of attention to coordination with NGOs and capacity on the ground at the expense of cross-Whitehall integration”.

The soft power report pays much too little attention to NGOs. This is a pity. It is because of the spectrum of evidence that would have been required. The interface between military and civilian is well covered in the report. Recommendation 24, for example, calls for an analysis of smart and soft power. Can the Minister confirm that this will be carried through in the 2015 SDSR, if the Government win the election? The government response on page 37 twice refers to the Stabilisation Unit as “a key Government instrument” which,

“delivers more effective post-conflict work and actively champions co-operation between military and civilian actors”.

This is some advance but it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s view.

I turn to cultural diplomacy. I am a firm believer in the power of culture and sport in conflict or post-conflict states. Having followed the fortunes and misfortunes of South Sudan, once as a spectator of the famous Dinka dancing, I remember how cultural and sporting events, such as the Shakespeare exchanges and the Twic county Olympics in that country, deliberately created a new sense of dignity among people suffering from a lack of almost anything.

In Afghanistan, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation has demonstrated a similar success. It has played a part in creating an atmosphere of hope in the midst of conflict. I saw how this project had helped to rebuild the old quarter of Kabul and had trained or retrained countless artists, designers, craftsmen and those acquiring new business skills for the nation. I declare an interest because my daughter once worked on this project and is now active in a programme called Culture and Conflict which holds seminars and encourages artists in different areas of conflict. It is important to stress that the success and sustainability of these programmes depends entirely on direct engagement of local people and civil society in the country concerned. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, they have credibility.

I have some doubts about the interference of government in the activities of NGOs and the risk of it being misunderstood. One has only to look at the work of NGOs in Afghanistan and how they have had to work at a local level to avoid giving the Taliban the impression that they were somehow agents of foreign powers. There are many examples in developing countries of NGOs resisting such suspicion, especially when they are receiving foreign funds, and of Governments pursuing them for those reasons. The best answer is for NGOs to remain indigenous as far as possible and resolutely to pursue goals which belong to their own communities. That does not mean that our Government cannot work alongside them.

Finally, I pay tribute to my new noble friend Lady Wolf and her rigorous contribution which will make us all think. I join the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and other noble Lords who have challenged the Home Office on its attitude to Indian students. The Government’s response to this report takes nothing away from the central argument that the inclusion of students in immigration statistics—whatever the formal necessity of OECD presentations, which is the normal excuse—is both cynical and wrong and should be reversed. That was a key message, widely publicised, and I hope that the Minister will give this House an end-of-term report on that issue.