THE UK’S SOFT POWER AS A GEOPOLITICAL TOOL

Abstract

In the world with great power countries who are focused in achieving military advantages to gain world influence, it is important to study countries that use soft power to attract other countries and gain their influence. And one of these countries with strong cultural and economic power, is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. UK has many soft power assets worldwide, as the widespread English language, BBC World Service, the British Council, and institutions of higher education and Commonwealth of Nations. Overall, it is evident that modern UK is no match to a former UK, which had global hegemony, in terms of hard and soft power. But, nowadays, it only remained its soft power influence, which is still a great achievement of UK’s foreign policy, because it can be converted to a real actions and policies that are beneficial for the post-brexit UK. And this soft power capacity is already being converted to a real action, which can be observed in a new international initiative of the UK “Global Britain” that is aimed at increasing the influence of UK and its role in geopolitics. Therefore, because of the new stage of a cold war between U.S.A. and Russia – UK needs to re-establish its once power position in International Relations.