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This edited volume explores European cultural diplomacy, a topic of growing interest across the scholarly and applied public policy communities in recent years. The contributions focus on Europe, culture and diplomacy and the way they are interlinked in the contemporary international context. The European Union increasingly resorts to cultural assets and activity for both internal and external purposes, to foster European cohesion and advancing integration, and to mitigate the demise of other foreign policy components, respectively. This calls for an analysis of the strategic role of culture, especially as it relates to the realm of EU external action. The chapters provide a conceptual discussion of culture in international relations and examine how this concept relates to cultural diplomacy and cultural strategy. The authors discuss roles and relationships with the EU's 2016 Global Strategy and current EU attempts to foster the EU's political and societal resilience.

AbstractExtensive institutional and policy change is necessary for the values of co‐operation and constructive dialogue in international relations to be restored in the current context of the declining world order. But that alone is not sufficient. We also need behavioural changes in the world's top leaders. Hypermasculine and hubristic performance in strongman leader behaviour have consequences for stable world order. While there is robust research on corporate leadership, similar research focusing on the personal socio‐psychological agency of strongman leaders in international relations is in its infancy. This paper uses the psychoanalytic frameworks: of narcissism and hubris syndrome to focus on the styles and practices of strongman leadership in international relations. The cognitive behavioural practices of this kind of leadership on co‐operation and dialogue reflect a set of gender‐performative, hypermasculine practices. While this is not an exercise in feminist scholarship, it is our analytical and not very subtle normative and prescriptive conclusion that any reform of international co‐operation will be greatly limited without a greater gendered understanding and practice of power, if we are to combat the all too easily condoned rebarbative behaviour of strongman leaders in international relations.

AbstractAcademics, decision‐makers and policy makers have suggested that COVID and the war in Ukraine represent an 'inflection point'. The consequence will be 'the end of globalisation', 'a bipolar Cold War 2.0' and a return to Containment. In reality, the emerging world order is much messier. The logics of geoeconomics and geopolitics, largely aligned during the Cold War, are now in tension, ruptured by decades of globalisation, America's decline, and China's ascent. Consequently, US security allies now often wrestle with the fact that their economic ties link them to US rivals, notably China, or adversaries, like Russia. The pandemic and war have wrought geopolitical and economic adjustments, but any resemblance to Cold War blocs is superficial. What is consolidating is an era best described as fuzzy bifurcation. Unlike the Cold War, alliances will be tenuous across policy domains. With this greater latitude, even small and medium‐sized states may band‐wagon on security but will balance, hedge and even pursue strategic autonomy in others. Terms like 'allies', 'competitors', 'rivals', and even 'adversaries' become contingent on the policy issue. It is a world that American and Chinese policy makers will find challenging, indeed frustrating, because of the inconstancy of allied behaviour.

This article looks at transatlantic educational relations as an element of cultural relations more generally. It begins by locating higher education within the context of EU cultural diplomacy (CD) and soft power and in a comparative transatlantic context. Based on a study of key historical components in the transatlantic relationship and dialogue in higher education, it then shows how higher education relations across the Atlantic are subject to what we describe as the 'rhythms of soft power'. The article concludes that while CD in general, and higher education relations as a component of soft power in particular, might try to assist in the mitigation of prevailing politicosecurity and economic dynamics, it is going to be an uphill battle in an era in which we are witnessing at best a crisis and at worst the pending collapse of the liberal international order.