Moments In Flow

Tag: cultural

  • Soft Power, the Comet Tail, and the Festival Loop

    Let’s begin. Here is a proposition that sounds like a conspiracy theory and is, in fact, the boring consensus of every serious scholar of cultural diplomacy: soft power is an emergent apparatus of the state, and its delivery agents are brands, institutions, and franchises. Joseph Nye coined the term and defined it with surgical precision.…

  • The Coming Divorce: Washington, Brussels, and the New Puritan Century

    By an observer of the long cycle There is a story the commentariat keeps telling itself, and it is wrong. The story is that the transatlantic alliance is enduring a “rough patch” — a temporary spat between allies who will, once the current occupant of the White House leaves, return to business as usual. That…