When the Korean War exploded in 1950, few Americans felt a strong commitment to South Korea (ROK). By the end of the Cold War, however, the US–ROK alliance had emerged as one of the closest relationships in the American diplomatic portfolio. This essay examines the post-Korean War diplomacy between the two nations to suggest that the strong contemporary relationship is rooted in the immediate post-Korean War years, when skillful political maneuvering by ROK leaders, along with increasing cultural and economic connections between the two nations and the presence of a competing developmental model immediately across the 38th parallel, drove the two sides together despite the reluctance of American leaders.

‘The Irish Novel in Translation’ identifies the centrality of the Irish language to the nationalist ideology that underpinned the new Irish state as one of the main forces shaping the work of literary translation in Ireland in the twentieth century. A key moment here was the establishment of An Gúm in 1926, a state-funded body tasked with translating works both into and out of the Irish language. Many of the key Irish-language novelists of the period were supported by the work of An Gúm, and this placing of translation at the heart of a literary ecosystem is common for minoritised languages. Simultaneously, for Samuel Beckett, writing in French, and translating his own work, opened a way of escaping what he felt were the constraints of English. More recently, outward translation of Irish fiction into multiple world languages is understood as part of the exercise of soft power.

Central Asia would seem like a context where it would be difficult for China to establish its soft power through educational exchange due to the region’s widespread Russification. However, an opening was created for Chinese influence as Central Asian countries evolved away from the Soviet educational system, developed ties with other major powers, and established educational exchange programs. Beijing assumed that Central Asia’s Russification would fade, creating space for Chinese cultural influence commensurate with China’s economic influence. But Vladimir Putin has sought to reclaim Moscow’s great-power status within Central Asia based on the Russian language and Russkiy Mir. Putin has placed increased emphasis on Russian educational exchanges in Central Asia. Behind the crafted image of Sino-Russian cooperative joint leadership in Central Asia is a more complex reality. This chapter examines Russia and China’s differing visions for a Eurasian order that have emerged in different plans and practices for higher educational exchange in Central Asia. The languages used in Central Asian universities provide an indicator of Chinese influence relative to Russian and Western influence.

Chapter 1 grounds this study in larger policy and theoretical debates, including literature on US-China competition, China’s authoritarian diffusion, South–South communication flows, and China–Africa relations. It further introduces the analytical and conceptual framework of this study: China’s uneven image-making in Africa, which includes its ambitious image promotion mechanisms, as well as disjointed implementation and reception on the ground. The chapter also explains the methodological choices, including the focus on Ethiopia and Global China ethnographic approach.

Chapter 2 examines the positionality of Africa in China’s larger pursuit of image and recognition. Drawing on high-level official speeches, academic and policy writings, as well as on selective interviews with China–Africa experts in Beijing and Shanghai, the chapter shows China’s dualistic visions for Africa. It is at once treated as an important pathway for China’s construction of its global image as a major responsible power, but also as a sensitive context in competing for narratives with the West. China’s activities in Africa are frequently the target of Western criticisms that feed into the larger Western narrative of the “China threat.” Chinese scholars and experts, in turn, advocate for both offensive and defensive image-making in Africa – strengthening its diplomatic reach and debunking Western narratives on neocolonialism and imperialism.

Chapter 4 examines the changes from 1992 to 2009, a period that was characterised by the end of the Cold War. The focus is on examining how the EU became a politicised actor with increasing public visibility. The study analyses the most important developments of this period chronologically, including the introduction of the euro, the Schengen Agreement, several rounds of enlargement, and the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Both the institutional reforms and their social and political effects are considered. While considerable successes were achieved in economic integration and geographical enlargement, fundamental problems remained unresolved: incomplete institutional structures (especially in monetary and political union), growing social inequalities due to the neoliberal agenda, and a growing democratic deficit. These developments laid the foundations for the crises that were to shake the EU in the following decades. The period exemplifies the tensions between economic integration and political legitimacy, between enlargement and deepening, and between national sovereignty and supranational governance that still characterise European integration today.

Despite initial hopes that advances in information technology would spread and deepen democracy around the world, new platforms for communicating have instead provided opportunities for the weakening of democracy. Social media, website hosting, messaging apps, and related technologies provide easy and cheap ways for micro-actors such as individuals and small groups (in addition to more traditional state and non-state actors) to wield soft power for antidemocratic purposes. This chapter probes how the malign version of soft power works by attracting targets through flows of information that seduce and trick audiences with mis- and disinformation as well as with divisive and hateful messaging.  Focusing on malign soft power and how it is wielded through control of information flows (content, velocity, and access) provides a framework for assessing how cyber-enabled antidemocratic efforts take form and how new actors emerge.

This chapter follows the trajectory of an early Cold War ideal of a pro-American Islam that could serve US foreign policy goals. It asks how and why Islamic mysticism generally, and Sufism specifically, came to be seen as the West-friendly “moderate Islam.” What role did transculturation and comparativism between Türkiye and Iran under America’s global hegemony play in forming this common perception?

Building on research into US government archives, Pahlavi propaganda texts, Islamist sermons, and print media from US allies, including Iran’s common comparand, Türkiye, this chapter demonstrates how State Department officials, CIA researchers, and public intellectuals used representations of Empress Farah to link beauty to modernization theory and mobilized comparative critiques of both on aesthetic grounds. Examining these depictions alongside the Empress’s own views on her appearance and political role offers new insights into the gendered limits of nation-branding and soft power.

After the conquest of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru, Spanish dominance in the Americas was maintained through a combination of “soft” and “hard” power: a mixture of armed coercion and an elaborate legal-administrative apparatus which ensured that tension rarely escalated into full-blown conflict. The sturdiness of Spain’s empire may also be attributed to other significant factors, including epidemiology (differential immunity), topography, and the avoidance of certain types of military engagement, all of which tended to intersect with or reinforce the deployment of “soft” and “hard” power. There were at least three broad threats to Spain’s dominance: external enemies, particularly rival European states covetous of the economic advantages Spain obtained from its New World dominions; unsubdued Amerindians on the fringes of Spanish settlement, who clung to their autonomy and effectively controlled vast swathes of territory through to the end of the colonial period; and an internal, heterogeneous group from all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, from wealthy, privileged merchants to mistreated African slaves. At some point or other from 1521 until 1808, an internal challenge to Spanish dominance emerged from every sector of colonial society. Whether by design or felicitous coincidence, external and internal threats to Spanish dominance were rarely coterminous, which may help to explain the empire’s resilience and longevity.