Credit: Mary Kay Magistad

But how effective is soft power in addressing the most pressing challenges of international diplomacy in 2016? Can the attractiveness of British culture and values be of use beyond the economic sphere of promoting exports? There are metrics for examining the worth of the UK’s soft power. However, to consider the effect of UK soft power beyond the realm of economics we must examine global actors who attempt to block their citizens’ access to British cultural influences.

When John le Carré’s eponymous British spy George Smiley discovers that there has been a mole inside British intelligence he seeks not only to discover what damage has been done by this betrayal, but also to see what Moscow Central knew and what weaknesses they sought to disguise. Smiley rightly calls this a “back-bearing.”

For our purposes, we are interested in a soft power back-bearing. By examining which UK soft power initiatives cause the greatest concern to countries who challenge UK national interests we can take a back-bearing to find out which UK initiatives and campaigns have been effective in making the UK’s values, governance and culture attractive to civil society overseas.

In 2007 Russia ordered the British Council to close its regional offices in the country, ostensibly for acting “illegally” and violating Russian tax laws and contravening the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic norm, although the then Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed their true intentions directly linked this action with the UK’s investigation into murder in London of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

Russia had been cracking down increasingly on Western charities and NGOs operating on their soil, and still does. Three years prior to the closure of the Council’s regional offices the Russian tax police raided their Moscow office. In August 2007 Russia closed the last FM broadcast frequency of the BBC’s Russia service. Russia is in good company in its resist British culture influence. Belarus, Europe’s last dictatorship forced the British Council shut down its last office in 2000 because the “environment created by the regime severely limited the Council’s ability to achieve impact widely”.

With increased tensions between Russia the West over energy security, Ukraine and Syria, Russia believes that the UK is seeking to influence its internal politics through NGOs and “propaganda”. Many in the Kremlin believe that the colour revolutions and the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine were primarily driven by external subversion by the West, rather genuine popular movements. It was Western soft power, the attractiveness of its culture and values that played a role in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and in Ukraine’s pivot towards the European Union, rather than direct interference in the political process. As a result Russia is cracking down on international NGOs, Western cultural institutions and on practices that are seen as Western imports, such as LGBT rights.

2015 marked years since the Magna Carta, a document that, for the first time, constrained the power of rulers, guaranteed access to justice. Its principles have influenced democracy and the rule of law across the world. To commemorate this milestone in British history and its contribution to international justice, an original edition from Hereford Cathedral was taken on tour to seven countries, including China. The document was due to be displayed for students at the Renmin University in Beijing in October 2015. At short notice however, and with minimum explanation, the exhibition was forced to move to the Residence of the British Ambassador to China – a far more private setting. China also has the dubious honour of joining Uzbekistan and Pakistan in banning the BBC’s website in October 2014.

It is likely that the display was cancelled because of the Magna Carta is a powerful symbol of liberty, human rights, and the constraint of executive power – all things that the Communist Party of China feel threatened by. China may be opening up to the world through trade and its own efforts at cultural diplomacy but it is still wary of cultural infiltration by the West. In 2013 President Xi Jinping created a national security commission that identified five major security challenges, which included “dangerous Western influences.” Western soft power was ranked as an existential security threat along with terrorism and separatism. To combat the threat of Western influences the Commission issued a directive to local party committees, called “The Current Situation of the Ideological Front”, providing new restrictions on seven topics that would not were to be discussed in the media and universities. These included “Universal Values”, “Freedom of speech”, Crony Capitalism and Judicial Independence. That “Western influences” are deemed such a threat as to be censored and classed as an existential threat along with terrorism, is a clear indication that UK soft power is effective improving Chinese perceptions of British values.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has a deep distrust of the UK Government, both in terms of its current Revolutionary ideological antagonisms with the West, but also its sense of grievance against Britain’s imperial meddling in Iran’s politics. It is deeply paranoid about the foreign policy intentions of the West. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, who wields ultimate temporal and spiritual power in the Islamic Republic, believe that the intention of the West is still ultimately regime change and that the USA in particular cannot tolerate the existence of the Islamic Republic.

The Supreme Leader has been a close student of history and sees the threat of Western cultural to be not only a matter of guarding the purity of the Revolution, and therefore the legitimacy of his rule, but as an existential threat to the State. In an address on state television the Supreme Leader said: “More than Iran’s enemies need artillery, guns and so forth, they need to spread cultural values that lead to moral corruption”. Khamenei had observed that the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and success of the “velvet revolutions” in Eastern Europe were not brought about by Western military intervention but a deliberate political and cultural offensive based on winning over public opinion and challenging the ideology of communism.

As the former Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox MP is fond of reminding us – Khamenei is more afraid of McDonalds than he is of Mossad. Khamenei and the hardliners within the Islamic Republic know and fear the consequences of ordinary Iranians being exposed to Western values cultural influences such as universal humans rights, as well as dispelling public perceptions of Britain as a place of moral corruption and anti-Muslim prejudice. This is why the BBC online news site’s Persian version was blocked to Iranian internet users in 2006.

British soft power provides the mood music to which much conventional diplomacy takes place. In today’s brave new world individuals, even in repressive systems of government, are more empowered and more connected with the wider world. Communicating British values and influencing the public of foreign countries is become more important in protecting our national interests. As we have seen, the measures taken by foreign governments to block British soft power demonstrates that they fear its affects and they perceive that their interests lie in limiting or controlling Western and British influence in their countries.