From Ukraine to the Middle East, from Sudan to Venezuela, the world is volatile. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to leave NATO, the war in Iran has sent energy prices spiralling, and the UK and Europe are rearming at a rate not seen since the Cold War. The Prime Minister has described hard power as “the currency of the age”, and the natural instinct of government will be to focus on strengthening its hard power in response to this volatile global environment.

While this is understandable and necessary, it would be a mistake for government to abandon soft power in this unstable moment, or to view geopolitics as an “either-or” trade-off between hard and soft power. At this very moment, we are seeing a USA burning through it’s soft power capital at breakneck speed and, with its recent closing down of old capabilities from cultural diplomacy in the State Department and US AID ceasing operations, it has fewer means to put into rebuilding (should it decide to do so). Indeed, the complexity of global geopolitics means that the UK must be even more strategic. As a middle power that relies on alliances to pursue its goals and interests, it is essential and ensure it draws on all of its international capabilities to navigate choppy international waters. That must include soft power as well as defence.

Hard power alone cannot achieve a nation’s goals

The case for increased defence spending is not in dispute here. NATO commitments matter, and the UK is right to take them seriously. But the idea that hard power and soft power pull in opposite directions fundamentally misunderstands how influence actually works.

Military capability provides deterrence. It does not, on its own, build the coalitions needed to use it, sustain it, or legitimate it in the eyes of the world. Those coalitions matter because no serious objective, whether sanctioning an adversary, securing shipping lanes, or holding a diplomatic line, can be delivered by the UK alone, and with UN multilateralism visibly fraying, the work of assembling partners falls increasingly to states themselves. The government’s own emphasis on flexible, issue-based partnerships with new strategic allies depends on exactly this groundwork: cultural and institutional engagement that opens doors long before harder objectives are on the table. Coalitions are built on relationships and on years of cultural presence, diplomatic credibility, and the kind of institutional trust that cannot simply be procured by government contracts.

When the strikes on Iran began, Prime Minister Starmer joined the leaders of France and Germany in condemning the Iranian counter-strikes and calling for a resumption of diplomacy. The UK’s positioning as an independent voice for de-escalation, only carries weight if the UK is perceived as a principled and engaged actor in the region.

That perception is built through long-term engagement, by the government but also by soft power institutions: the BBC, the UK’s universities teaching future leaders around the world, and other forms of, often unheralded, cultural exchange that build up trust and understanding. These are the channels through which diplomacy actually functions. Trust accumulated over years keeps lines of communication open in a crisis, widens the space for compromise, and gives counterparts a reason to listen when hard conversations begin. Even if the UK had reached defence spending targets of 3.5% of GDP, we would still be relying on soft-power levers to help push for a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

The UK’s adversaries are not pulling back from soft power

The UK remains in a strong position thanks to historic soft power, but the gap between the UK and adversaries is closing. Other nations recognise that warfare in the modern age is increasingly hybrid, with information playing a key role. When the BBC pulled Arabic radio services out of Lebanon it was quickly replaced by Russian state media. A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee estimated that Russia and China spend between £6-8bn a year on international state media, and that trust in these sources has risen markedly.

Adversaries increasingly treat the information environment as contested ground, where the aim is not to persuade but to disrupt and degrade open systems. UK institutions work under different constraints, bound by norms of transparency and editorial independence. Russian and Chinese state media are not. A UK that cannot defend its own information space will struggle to be heard abroad.

The 2023 attack on the British Library illustrates the importance of the UK’s institutions, and the increasing conflict over information. One of the UK’s most significant cultural institutions suffered what has been described as one of the worst cyber incidents in British history, carried out by the Rhysida ransomware group, believed by researchers to be operated by Russian-speaking actors. The attack shows that UK soft power institutions matter enough to be worth targeting, and that the information environment they inhabit is actively contested. Whether the attack was state-directed or simply tolerated by a government that looks the other way when its criminals target Western institutions, the effect is the same.

The British Council’s Trends in Soft Power 2020-2025 report, which tracks the soft power investment and strategy of twenty-five leading economies, also found that the United States has undergone substantial retrenchment. USAID has formally ceased as a standalone agency, Voice of America staff have been placed on administrative leave, and there have been significant reductions across public diplomacy programmes. The gap ceded by the United States will be filled, but not necessarily by a friendly nation. The UK faces an opportunity here, but so too do our adversaries.

The strong benefit to cost ratio of soft power

Given the importance of soft power, it is worth stressing the point that the relative cost to government is exceedingly low when compared to hard power. The BBC World service has an annual budget of £400m, of which only a third comes from direct government funding. Given the estimated 300m weekly users of the world service, the cost per user is only around 44 pence.

The British Council operates on a comparable scale, receiving £163m in government funding in 2024-25 and generating £1bn for the UK economy. Against the cost of a single defence procurement programme, these are modest sums. Many of the UK’s soft power institutions have little-to-no government funding, yet play a key role in building up the nation’s soft power. These organisations could also benefit from more clear direction from government on its soft power goals, and how they can play a role.

For a government simultaneously increasing defence spending and managing genuine fiscal pressure, soft power offers something that is increasingly rare: substantial strategic return for relatively modest investment. That arithmetic makes the case for protecting these institutions and placing them in a central position to generate soft power capital.

The government must continue its good work on soft power

The government has, to its credit, recognised what is at stake. The most recent funding settlement for the BBC World Service saw the FCDO increase its funding by 8%. In January 2025, the Foreign Secretary and Culture Secretary launched the UK Soft Power Council, with the stated aim of developing a national soft power strategy. By July 2025 the Council had discussed a draft strategic framework, including proposed goals and outcomes. However, the strategy remains unpublished as of April 2026.

The institutions that carry UK soft power abroad have been direct about what they need. The UK Soft Power Group, which BFPG and the British Council co-convene, and which brings together organisations from the Premier League to the Wellcome Trust has called on government to provide clarity on strategic priorities, long-term planning horizons, and develop predictable funding mechanisms.

Publishing a strategy is not a be all and end all for soft power. However, it is an important signal, to our institutions, allies and adversaries that however much hard power may be the “currency of the age”, without soft power, this currency devalues considerably.

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