The Commonwealth of Nations as an actor of the soft power of the British Empire

Naumov Alexander Olegovich ORCID: 0000-0002-8366-5934 Doctor of History Professor at the Faculty of Public Administration of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leading Researcher at the RGGU Scientific and Educational Center 38 Akademika Anokhina Street, room 3, 392, Moscow, 119602, Russia naumovao@my.msu.ru Other publications by this author

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is one of the recognized leaders in the implementation of the "soft power" strategy. This leadership is due to the extensive network of relevant institutions, the consistency of their work, solid funding and staffing, and the government's attention to this important area of international activity. The British Council, the BBC, universities, non-governmental organizations, the Institute of the monarchy and other actors of the "soft power" of Foggy Albion have been functioning extremely effectively for a long time.

Even the most reputable indexes and ratings that try to identify the "soft power" potential of a country are created with the most direct participation of London. One of them is the Global Soft Power Index, which is generated by the British consulting company Brand Finance. The authors of this index identify three pillars of "soft power" – recognition, reputation and influence on the world stage, which are divided into eight key areas (business and trade, international relations, education and science, cultural heritage, management, mass media, sustainable development, people and values); in addition, the following factors are taken into account.n. recommendations based on an analysis of the answers to the question "Would you recommend this country for ...", respectively: investments, purchase of goods and services, work, study, tourism. As of 2024, it analyzed the positions of more than one hundred and twenty countries. Another rating, "Soft Power 30", was also developed by the British strategic communications consulting company Portland in collaboration with the American Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. This annual ranking of the thirty most successful countries in the field of "soft power" is calculated on the basis of six main categories (digital technologies, entrepreneurship, education, culture, global interaction and governance), as well as opinion polls. Of course, these indexes are very arbitrary and subjective, but they deserve attention, as well as the fact that the United Kingdom invariably occupies the first places in them (in the most recent chronological ratings, it was in second place in both cases).

If you look closely at the indicators according to which the United Kingdom is leading, it becomes clear how important the legacy of the British Empire is for the current success of the country's "soft power" policy (we propose to take the discovery of J. R.R. Tolkien as the starting point of this period). The creation of the island of Newfoundland in North America in 1497, and the transfer of Hong Kong to the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China in 1997 is considered its final moment). As the Russian scientist E.M. Kharitonova correctly notes, over these half-millennia, the "Mistress of the Seas" "interacted with numerous peoples around the world and established its own rules, created colonial administrative structures in the likeness of its own, spread its norms and principles of organization of various public and state institutions, introduced people outside the country to its culture and language." ^{[1, p. 45]}.

The institutions and mechanisms of "soft power" created in the first half of the 20th century to maintain the stability of the empire, and then for its modernization and transformation, are still functioning fruitfully. One of them was and still is the Commonwealth of Nations, an interstate association consisting on a voluntary basis of almost sixty countries that were once part of the British Empire with a total population of two and a half billion people (more than 30% of the inhabitants of the planet Earth). Over the past century, it has been an indispensable component of the "soft power" of the British Empire.

The term "soft power", as you know, was introduced into scientific use by the American political scientist J. Nye Jr. in 1990. At the turn of the century, he wrote a number of fundamental monographs in which he developed his theory. The scientist argued that the "soft power" of the state is based on three main resources: the achievements of the state in the field of high and mass culture; values held by the political leadership and shared by the majority of the population; legitimate foreign policy of the country. Nye defined "soft power" itself as "the ability to influence others by interacting in the field of agenda formation, influencing by attracting sympathy to achieve desired results" ^{[2, p. 21]}.

The topic of the "soft power" policy of the British Empire was rarely in the field of view of domestic researchers. Moreover, if the experts addressed this issue, it was about considering individual specific historical subjects. For example, we can mention the work of A.V. Sagimbayev on the work of the Round Table group at the beginning of the 20th century ^[3], the scientific article by A.G. Onishchenko on the elements of "soft power" in the British strategy towards Egypt in the second half of the 1930s ^[4], the publication by A.A. Gusev, in which the author He examines the "soft" methods used by London in the framework of colonial policy in South Arabia ^[5]. Various aspects of the activities of the Commonwealth of Nations, in turn, were touched upon in the works of N.A. Stepanova ^[6], D.I. Portnyagin ^[7], A.V. Sukhorukov ^[8], A.Y. Tostukhina ^[9], and a number of other studies. However, the topic of the role of the Commonwealth as an actor of the "soft power" of the British Empire has not been adequately developed in the above-mentioned scientific publications. This article is devoted to eliminating this gap.

It should be noted that London promptly adopted J. Nye's theory, which was created overseas. This is not surprising, because the British political elites have been carrying out similar policies in practice for many decades, especially within their vast imperial space. Speaking in 2013 at a meeting of the Committee on "Soft Power" and the influence of the country specially created in the British Parliament, Nye outlined the resources and tools that, in his opinion, allow the UK to be one of the world leaders in the use of "soft power" ^[10]. A cursory glance at the document, which reflected the judgments of J. It is enough to understand what a significant imprint the colonial past of Foggy Albion has left on the process of formation and development of this policy.

The most famous actors of Britain's "soft power" that still exist today were created in the first half of the 20th century (for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC in 1927, and the British Council in 1934), when the British Empire entered its twilight zone and definitely needed modernization. From a geographical point of view, the sphere of refraction of the efforts of these and other actors was primarily the imperial space, united since the middle of the century into the Commonwealth of Nations.

The term "Commonwealth of Nations" was introduced into the socio-political discourse by the British statesman Earl Rosebery back in 1884. Later, the ideas of creating a new imperial construct were developed in the activities of the Round Table group, the most fruitful period of which occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1909, within the framework of this informal but very influential organization, a project was developed to create a so-called Imperial Federation based on innovative approaches to the British colonial system. In 1911, one of the most active members of the association, L. Curtis, proposed using the name "Commonwealth of Nations" instead of the term "British Empire" ^{[3, pp. 451-452]}. A little later, F. Kerr, the founder and editor of the Round Table magazine, wrote: "The British Commonwealth serves a great purpose in the world. It provides some form of constitution and law for a quarter of the world's population, uniting representatives of all races, skin color and degree of civilization, and it preserves peace between them, encouraging the transition to self-government everywhere" ^{[1, p. 97]}. According to the ideologists of the transformation of the institutional structure of the British Empire, it spread the experience of its own political and administrative institutions in various regions of the world, thereby creating the foundation for a fundamentally new "unification of peoples", within which the understanding of "the civic duty of man to man" should have been established ^{[12, p. 46]}. In fact, the members of the Round Table were engaged in shaping an attractive agenda based on certain values, that is, they were doing exactly what J. R.R. Tolkien wrote about a century later. Nye, explaining the essence of "soft power".

The British Commonwealth of Nations, as part of the metropolis and the dominions that existed at that time, was created in 1931 on the basis of the Statute of Westminster. Eighteen years later, in 1949, it acquired its modern name – the Commonwealth of Nations, then uniting Great Britain itself, as well as Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, Pakistan and Ceylon. With the gradual disintegration of the empire, London needed fresh ideas for a kind of rebranding of the imperial project, but at the same time, the renewed Commonwealth had to rely on the institutional framework and mechanisms of interaction between the center and the periphery that had existed for decades. To solve this difficult task, as N.A. Stepanova correctly notes, Great Britain even had to set a "precedent by replacing the principle of "loyalty to the monarch", one of the basic principles of pre-war unification, with recognition of the British monarch as only a symbol and head of the new Commonwealth, so that former colonies such as India, which declared themselves republics, They were also able to join the organization" ^{[6, p. 216]}. British leaders believed that their country, as the "material and spiritual leader" of the Commonwealth of Nations, could become a multiracial bridge and an effective barrier against communism^[7]. In the context of the Cold war and the confrontation with the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union, maintaining the status of a world power, maintaining control over the imperial space and, thus, ensuring its presence in almost all parts of the world was seen by the political leadership of London as one of the key geopolitical imperatives.

It must be said that the fears of the British political elites regarding the negative prospects of the existence of an "Empire over which the sun never set" were by no means unfounded. Thus, the Suez crisis of 1956 became a serious test for Great Britain, which caused harsh criticism within the Commonwealth and sharply accelerated the collapse of the British colonial Empire. A powerful blow to London's position was also the desire of a number of young Asian and African states to develop cooperation with the USSR and, consequently, to distance themselves from the Commonwealth of Nations. Since the 1960s, differences in views on further internal development and foreign policy priorities have become more frequent between members of the so-called Old (or White) The Commonwealth, which included the former resettlement colonies of Britain, and the newly independent Asian and, especially, African countries that were part of the so-called Black Commonwealth.

Of course, as the Russian researchers N.K. Kapitonova and E.V. Romanova rightly write, the Commonwealth of Nations "could not replace the empire, but London considered it as a serious factor in strengthening its position in the world.… The Commonwealth was presented as a unique forum that made it possible to overcome the differences between those who joined and those who did not join, as well as the poor and the rich" ^{[13, p. 541]}. Thanks to the Commonwealth of Nations, Great Britain was able to largely maintain its political, economic and cultural positions in the former colonies, fulfilling the most important task for itself to prevent the transition of the organization's member countries into the sphere of influence of the USSR. In this regard, we can agree with A.Y. Tolstukhina's opinion that the Commonwealth, at least for London, in the era of bipolar confrontation represented an original Anglo-Saxon project of "global soft power," which, in addition to NATO, "worked" to unify and consolidate the global geopolitical space" ^{[9, p. 18]}.

In addition, the very existence of the Commonwealth was based on principles directly related to the policy of "soft power", such as equality, flexibility, voluntariness, and the absence of strict mutual obligations. And already in the middle of the 20th century, it turned into a multicultural association, which included countries that represented not only Western civilization, but also (at least) Hindu, Islamic and African. In the final period of the British Empire, which chronologically coincided with the era of the Cold War, the Commonwealth of Nations faced issues that also fit into the "soft–power" agenda, such as decolonization, the fight against racism, the movement for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, environmental issues, etc. And the geographically shrinking metropolis itself, through the institutions and mechanisms of the Commonwealth, promoted its ideals and values to already independent states.

Separately, it is impossible not to mention the role of London's educational policy within the framework of the Commonwealth of Nations. The vast majority of the leaders of the newly independent states, which were once colonies of Great Britain, were educated in its schools and universities, which in one way or another ensured the loyalty of these leaders to the British crown. In 1960, the Commonwealth Plan for the Development of Education and Partnership was adopted, the purpose of which was to promote the higher education of promising young people from the organization's member countries abroad, primarily at universities in the United Kingdom. Thus, the future elites received not only prestigious diplomas, but also learned English, and, consequently, British culture – the most important components of the "soft power" of any state.

It should also be mentioned about specific initiatives of the association in the cultural and humanitarian field, for example, about the Commonwealth Games. The first Games were held in 1930; later, like the Olympics, they were held (and are held) every four years in different countries, but the set of disciplines in these competitions constantly varies, especially taking into account the sporting preferences of the host country, from canoeing and bowling to netball, squash and cricket. The Commonwealth Games (since 2002 they have been called the Commonwealth Federation Games) remain very popular to this day; thanks to them, Great Britain, using the tools of sports diplomacy competently, "provides positive conditions for political and economic partnership in the post-imperial space" ^{[14, pp. 274-275]}.

Among the "soft-power" projects of the Commonwealth of Nations initiated by London in the 20th century, it is also worth mentioning the Commonwealth Foundation, which deals with the development of civil society in the member states; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, responsible for preserving historical memory and maintaining military cemeteries and memorials, where more than one and a half million servicemen from the member countries are buried. It was part of the British Empire during the First and Second World Wars; a virtual university for small Commonwealth countries and a number of others.

And, of course, the figure of the British monarch, its formal head and symbol, played a huge role in the functioning of the Commonwealth of Nations as an actor of the "soft power" of the British Empire. This role was most clearly manifested during the reign of Elizabeth II, who, thanks to her personal diplomacy, active position on the most difficult and sensitive issues, as well as her special status, managed to smooth out sharp corners in the relations of the member countries with Great Britain and preserve the relative unity of the Commonwealth. The very fact of the British monarch's existence made it possible to put into practice the idea of the British establishment about the existence of the Commonwealth of Nations as an informal empire.

In general, with the help of the Commonwealth of Nations, London managed to institutionalize the reconfiguration of the British Empire into a new interstate union. The Russian researcher of the issue, A.Y. Tolstukhina, notes that it is based on the so–called idea of the common good, "one of the fundamental ideas of European political culture," which helped "keep such a heterogeneous association in unity," while acting quite flexibly, dynamically and pragmatically ^{[9, p. 24]}. These and other agenda–shaping ideas and values – the cornerstone of the "soft power" strategy - were of lasting importance for the existence of both the British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations.

And currently, official London continues to popularize the idea of loyalty to the Commonwealth of Nations (whose importance in the system of foreign policy priorities of the Foggy Albion, after a certain oblivion in the late XX – early XXI centuries, has increased significantly in recent years) based on the English language and the historical commonality of the destinies of its member countries; promising young people from the member states receive education in British universities; sporting events are held on a large scale; the British monarch is still at the head of this organization. All this, of course, allows the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to remain a powerful player in the field of "soft power", significantly ahead of most states of the modern world in this most important area of world politics.