Trump’s war on Hollywood, Harvard and soft power
From US-educated international students to pirated copies of American films and music, soft power once gave the US an edge in geopolitical rivalries. However, US President Donald Trump’s recent assault on academia and popular culture is sabotaging the impact of American soft power at a time when it is most needed, says Chinese academic Han Heyuan.
Let me begin with a brief aside. In 2011, my book We Don’t Have Avatar: The Crisis of China’s Soft Power (《我们没有阿凡达：中国软实力危机》) was published and attracted some attention in academic circles. In 2012, I was invited to deliver a speech at a symposium on soft power organised by a university, where one of the other speakers was Joseph Nye, the father of soft power theory. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend and missed the opportunity to hear the master’s insights firsthand — a regret I still carry to this day. I dedicate this article in memory of Nye, who passed away on 6 May.
American sociologist, politician, former US ambassador to the United Nations and senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once took a cultural approach and ultimately concluded: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” I would add that while politics can indeed sometimes change a culture and save it from itself, politics can also change a culture and lead to its destruction.
Lights, camera, tariffs?
Two recent policies introduced by US President Donald Trump fall into the latter category. The first is the Trump administration’s suppression of US universities, including Harvard. The second is his meddling in Hollywood.
In early May, Trump dropped a bombshell on social media: “... a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” This president, promising to “Make America Great Again”, is now targeting one of America’s own cultural icons: Hollywood.
These two things may seem unrelated, but they both point to the same consequence: the erosion of soft power, which is vital to the US. Nye once argued that national power does not merely (or even primarily) depend on military and economic strength. He believed that America’s global dominance stemmed from a “third dimension”, or what is called “soft power”. Education — particularly involving international students — and Hollywood-led pop culture have contributed significantly to the building of US soft power.
... Chiang Kai-shek, former Taiwan President Wang Jingwei, former Taiwan Premier He Yingqin and writer Lu Xun all studied in Japan and held favourable views of it. Similarly, academics Hu Shih and Liang Shiqiu, who studied in the US, also felt favourably towards it.
Investing in future allies
Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell once said of international student education: “I can think of no more valuable asset to our country than the friendship of future world leaders who have been educated here.”
Students from around the world come to the US and return to their home countries full of admiration for American values and systems. As one international education agency noted in a report: “Thousands of people who studied in the US will continue to feel goodwill toward America.” Many of these international students later assume key positions, with influence over policies that impact US interests.
Indeed, it appears that international students tend to have favourable views of the countries they studied in. In modern Chinese history, for instance, Chiang Kai-shek, former Taiwan President Wang Jingwei, former Taiwan Premier He Yingqin and writer Lu Xun all studied in Japan and held favourable views of it. Similarly, academics Hu Shih and Liang Shiqiu, who studied in the US, also felt favourably towards it. And it is no surprise that those who studied in the Soviet Union or Germany spoke well of those countries. This shows that attracting international students is one of the most effective ways for a country to cultivate soft power.
In relation to this, academic and scientific exchanges have played an important role in strengthening America’s soft power. Since the 1950s, the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council have collaborated with 110 US universities to launch exchange programmes for students and faculty. Despite various restrictions imposed by the Soviet government on the scope of such exchanges, approximately 50,000 Soviet writers, journalists, officials, musicians, dancers, athletes and scholars participated in these programmes between 1958 and 1988.
Even more Americans travelled to the Soviet Union as part of the exchanges. As Nye said, “While some American sceptics at the time feared that visiting Soviet scientists and KGB agents would ‘steal us blind’, they failed to notice that the visitors vacuumed up political ideas along with scientific secrets. Many such scientists became leading proponents of human rights and liberalisation inside the Soviet Union.”
Disseminating American values through pop culture
Let us take a look now at Hollywood’s contribution to American soft power. Nye said writer Ben Wattenberg has argued that “American culture [as represented by Hollywood] includes glitz, sex, violence, vapidity and materialism, but that is not the whole story. It also portrays American values that are open, mobile, individualistic, anti-establishment, pluralistic, voluntaristic, populist, and free. ‘It is that content, whether reflected favorably or unfavorably, that brings people to the box office. That content is more powerful than politics or economics. It drives politics and economics.’”
Nye remarked that “hammers and bulldozers would not have worked without the years-long transmission of images of the popular culture of the West that breached the Wall before it fell”.
The appeal of popular culture has aided the US in its pursuit of some of its important foreign policy goals, such as the rebuilding of democracy in Europe after WWII. The Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were crucial economic and military means to achieve this goal, while popular culture also played a role. Austrian historian Reinhold Wagnleitner once argued that the rapid adaptation to American popular culture in many European countries after WWII undoubtedly had a positive impact on the process of their democratisation.
Grounded in the core values of freedom, volition, vitality, liberation, modernisation and youthfulness, among others, it revitalised and energised the cultural landscape of post-war Europe. In this regard, Nye cannot help but admit that while the Marshall Plan was indeed an important foreign policy for the US vis-a-vis its goal of European reconstruction, the ideas disseminated to Europe through American popular culture were equally important.
Nye also believed that the appeal of popular culture was a crucial contribution to another important US foreign policy objective: that of winning the Cold War. He pointed out that the propaganda and cultural projects carried out by the Soviet state machinery could not rival the influence of American commercial popular culture in terms of flexibility and attractiveness. In fact, the Berlin Wall had been pierced by cultural holes from Hollywood long before it fell in 1989. Nye remarked that “hammers and bulldozers would not have worked without the years-long transmission of images of the popular culture of the West that breached the Wall before it fell”.
Nye also wrote that “other unintended political effects were conveyed indirectly”; after watching American films that were not political in nature, the Soviets became aware that Westerners did not have to wait in long queues to buy food, did not have to live in communal housing and owned their own cars.
Hollywood’s political impact
With a tinge of sarcasm, he joked that even as the Soviet Union censored and restricted Western films, those that made it past the screening process could still produce a devastating political impact. Nye added that at times the political impact was direct, though unintended. For instance, after watching restricted screenings of On the Beach and Dr. Strangelove (both films which were critical of US nuclear policy), a Soviet journalist commented that the films “shocked us… we began to understand that the same thing would happen to us as to them in a nuclear war”.
Nye also wrote that “other unintended political effects were conveyed indirectly”; after watching American films that were not political in nature, the Soviets became aware that Westerners did not have to wait in long queues to buy food, did not have to live in communal housing and owned their own cars. These realisations rendered negative propaganda disseminated by Soviet media outlets ineffectual.
Even rock music played a role, despite Soviet attempts to stop it. An aide to Gorbachev later confirmed that “the Beatles were our quiet way of rejecting ‘the system’ while conforming to most of its demands.” The historian Wagnleitner likewise concluded that “however important the military power and political promise of the US were for setting the foundation for American successes in Cold War Europe, it was the American economic and cultural attraction that really won over the hearts and minds of the majorities of young people for Western democracy”.
Trump’s policies may be driven by short-term political considerations, but they could cause long-term, irreversible damage to American soft power.
Time to make soft power great again
Regrettably, Trump’s recent slate of policies has set the stage for the decline of American soft power. He attempted to reshape the education system by suppressing Harvard University, neglecting the key function that education plays in shaping America’s image globally. He has also sought to preserve American cultural hegemony by pressuring Hollywood, forgetting that Hollywood is in fact a vital vessel of American soft power. These measures have not only failed to enhance US influence; on the contrary, they have also weakened America’s appeal and charisma on the international stage.
Trump’s policies may be driven by short-term political considerations, but they could cause long-term, irreversible damage to American soft power. If the US were to continue down this path, its global leadership and influence will inevitably be severely eroded. Other countries could capitalise on the opportunity to fill the void left by the US, based on more open and inclusive cultural policies. If the Trump administration fails to recognise this, the decline of America’s soft power will be inevitable, and the global state of affairs will in turn undergo significant change.
