Russia’s “Soft Power” in the Putin Epoch

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century experts realize that national security cannot be based on a nation’s hard power alone. We live in a time when various kinds of power have become important. Hard power in international politics remains a crucial factor, economics too, but the influence of soft power cannot be ruled out as a negligible factor. The concept of soft power was introduced by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye in the late 1980s to describe the ability of a political body, that is, a subject of international law such as a state, to influence indirectly the behaviour of other political bodies (states) through non-military and non-economic means in order to achieve national interest (Nye, 2004). The idea was developed to improve American foreign policy in a rapidly globalizing world. However, in our opinion, this concept is also applicable to the foreign policy of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin.