7.1B Maintenance of power

• • Maintenance of power is achieved utilising hard and soft powers
  • These sit on a spectrum, meaning that the methods are somewhere on a scale between two extremes

  
• Hard power = military power to try and force countries to behave in a certain way.

  • Military - use of force, threats of force or military action, the forming of military alliances
  • The invasion of Iraq in 1991 in response to the invasion of Kuwait  
  • The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 following the bombing of the Twin Towers in the USA
• Soft power = Use political and cultural influence to try and persuade countries to behave in a certain way: These include:

  • Political (diplomacy)
  • Cultural 
  • British literature - Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen 
  • Music - Elgar through the Beatles to Adele,
  • The BBC is one of the world's most trusted broadcasters
  • Television - Downtown Abbey and The Crown have worldwide popularity (73 million people watched The Crown and Downtown Abbey)
  • Over 500,000 overseas students study in the UK each year
• Smart power = Involves the use of both hard and soft power

  -> USA (westernisation and mass nuclear weapons)