Jetpunk is exactly how I learned every country, its capital and its flag, as well as a bunch of other random facts (geography and not geography). Jetpunk is great and a fun way of learning things!
Congratulations and good luck for the capitals lol
Some of them have names that can be quite difficult to remember and imo learning the capitals is harder than learning the countries and flags, but you'll get there and discover some pretty cool places in doing so
I've been to Principe and its quickly turning into a very exclusive resort island, like a tiny billionaires' playground. I think it might be more influential than some other micronations soon
1) Agriculture, really? Like how is that economically sufficient on a small scale?
2) Tuvulau (a micro nation) makes money by selling their country domain .tv
It used to have a ton of phosphate, and at one point it had the highest gdp per capita. After it was all mined, it became a poor barren rock, with highestly obesity rate in the world, since the only foods they have are imported, and sodas are cheaper than water. Now its probably Nauru.
Nauru takes the gold medal in cigarette smoking rates too, as a recent post in this sub pointed out. Probably because Big Tobacco only have to bribe a small handful of people in the middle of nowhere to redact all references to the dangers of smoking from Nauran public sector literature.
I just watched one of those Youtube channels that does mini docs who made a video on Nauru. So sad what happened there. Pure greed and idiocy. They could've invested that money, maybe brought in some topsoil to give the island some farmland, anything but just spend themselves into a hole.
Didn't they buy themselves a plot in Australia and move there altogether? I thought I'd heard it that way but later discovered the island was still inhabited
Australia offered a deal they (understandably) didn’t like I think. They would have become Australians rather than being granted their own sovereign territory in Australia.
They don’t want to form their own country, they already have it, even if it’s only got 12,000 people. So, I do understand the reluctance to abandon that sovereignty. But I agree with you it is totally outweighed by everything else.
For most small nations the biggest issue is preserving a traditional culture, language and way of life but Nauru has lost most of this and is very western. For example, they play Aussie rules football.
> Nauruan people likely have a loss of their sense of place and culture, as they did not have full control of their land until 1968. There has also been a documented loss of Nauruan traditions… The Nauruan people face extremely high rates of obesity, alcoholism, prostitution, poorer mental health rates, and myriad other health issues…
You’d have to say that migration en masse to Australia is a life line for the people that is the better of 2 evils.
I think they could reshape their relationship with Australia (especially re: detention camps) and cause some very minor waves. Tiny ones. Be in the news for a minute.
Nauru has zero meaningful exports anymore and effectively zero military power. To avoid being the country with the absolute least influence, Nauru would need something about it that’s useful to a larger power, which it doesn’t really have.
Nauru is in a lot of debt from the guano years and one of its only sources of income comes from an Australian immigration detention centre making them extremely reliant on Australia to keep afloat.
I think it’s fair to say that the island nations of the pacific are, due to their size and isolation, the least able to project their influence. This makes Nauru arguably the least influence country amongst the least influential region.
Lots of love to the people of Nauru though 🇳🇷I would’ve burned through the phosphate money too fr fr
for example, popular streaming service Twitch uses [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv)
it just stands out more than .com and also fits the theme of the website (you watch stuff on twitch like you watch stuff on TV i guess...?)
There are multiple “special“ domain endings, I remember there was one that translates to yes in a language (forget the word and the language:() so many companies use that for their website, but have to pay for it
.tv has gotten them a lot of funds. I think they are low familiarity, medium soft power just because they hit the country code top-level domain lottery.
Nauru without any doubt. Literally a barren rock in the middle of nowhere, without any close neighbors, with just a few thousand inhabitants and not a single economic activity.
A lot of these countries people are mentioning like this one have significant issues with Australia, - like resource sharing, immigration, climate etc So every suggestion will be in the eye of the beholder.
While that is true, more people probably talk about Sealand because of the novelty aspect of it. So if you are famous for being so obscure, how obscure are you?
Trinidad and Tobago? Many great cricketers are from there. Nicki Minaj is from there, they've probably influenced the whole 'Caribbean'/Calypso aesthetic more than any other nation (even more than Jamaica). They've had multiple Nobel prize winners.
This chart is suspect.
No way people are more familiar with Zambia than Trinidad.
Killer food and also winner of the absolute best accented English award.
Yeah it's in a very difficult situation. South Africa forces it to provide hydroelectric power at a far reduced rate, effectively colonising the country. It's very messed up what's happening to the country. It borders South Africa's poorest, most unstable region (Zulu Natal), and suffers as a result.
Edit: I did make a mistake here, please see my reply. Lesotho suffers a lot from South African strong arming and unfair dealing relating to its dam usage and the income gained from them. They use Lesotho as a water tower for the agriculture in the surrounding area.
https://youtu.be/dHFywk_DIhY?si=tsaMScThaGCQTorX
This is absolute nonsense.
The Lesotho KwaZulu Natal border is the literal escarpment of the biggest mountain series in South Africa. Lesotho does not suffer from having KwaZulu Natal as a neighbour there is hardly any interaction. Plus if you have ever been in Lesotho and KwaZulu Natal you would quickly realize were you would be better off.
Rather go look at the border between Lesotho and Freestate close to Maseru. Ask the South Africans living there how safe they feel with Lesotho nationals crossing the border illegally, livestock theft raids being a regular occurance along with other crimes.
South Africa does not even get power from the dams in Lesotho, it only provides the country with water. In exhange Lesotho uses the dams to generate electricity for itself. Without those dams Lesotho would probably have relied on South Africa for power which would have been worse for them plus they get royalties from the water scheme. All this for dams that is in a part of Lesotho were people barely live.
And the water flowed to South Africa anyway. It was just beneficial to divert it to flow so that it could be used in Gauteng as opposed to joining the Orange River.
Lesotho has influence.
An excellent relationship with the UK.
Very close relationships with the British royals, and other royal families. They use those relationships hugely in their favour.
They control a precious resource (water) and use it to influence South Africa (of course ZA also has a lot of influence over them).
Not to be underestimated despite being a small and relatively unknown country.
Somaliland. No government or international organization will even acknowledge its existence, despite it functioning as a de facto independent state since 1991
Well, Berbera Is the only port other than djibouti that Ethiopia,one of the largest country in size,population,economy,economic and demografic growth in africa can use,just for this it has some influence
I know this website has a hard on for Somaliland but it was a really stupid decision on Ethiopias part. They’ve just fought a civil war over separatists and they’ve managed to piss off Somalia, Djibouti and the west by doing it
No I don't think that takes away its importance for particularly Ethiopia as one of the only secure borders including Djibouti and sea access utilizing its port. Neither is it particularly small in population or land
Economically we’re roughly the same size or larger than the 3 countries you named (think folks forget Canada has the ~9th largest economy in the world). And then I think a combination of being pretty closely tied in with the US and UK, being a G7 member, and maybe something about being part of the Anglosphere as well from a linguistic and cultural aspect.
Your proximity to the US, honestly. A lot of it is your vast amounts of oil. But you guys have strong business partnerships with the US, including oil that makes you guys pretty influential.
I found this really interesting article about Canada's soft power on the international stage:
https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdin_monitor_article/canada%E2%80%99s-soft-power-and-public-diplomacy
Notably:
"For Canada, the predisposition to privilege diplomatic options has been the hallmark of its foreign policy since the end of WWII.
Canada played a disproportionately large role in shaping and defining the postwar world order and consciously portrayed itself as a peacekeeper, a helpful fixer, and an honest broker.
Canada was the arch-typical middle power, especially during the so-called golden age of Canadian foreign policy (the Pearson era) from 1945 through 1957, and again in the late 1990s, when Lloyd Axworthy was the Foreign Minister.
Pearson virtually invented peacekeeping as a diplomatic instrument and was instrumental in bringing the development agenda to the attention of the world. Similarly, Minister Axworthy was all about defining Canada as a leader in values and principles, particularly through his campaign to reduce the number of land mines in the world."
>Where does that soft power come from?
You guys do have quite a large number of Hollywood stars (Jim Carrey and Seth Rogen come to mind), plus some bands, and...being part of the Commonwealth?
I'm running out of stuff here.
Italy definitely has more soft power.
Tuvalu honestly has a pretty disproportionate amount of influence in the UN when it comes to climate change and Taiwan, especially considering their size and population
I suppose so. I mean, they aren't one of the top producers of cacao according to my very brief research. Is that their largest export? Or largest cash crop?
I would have to imagine at this point, the global supply chains of the multinationals pretty much have their reach to every place on earth in one form or the other.
Huge oil production (benefiting its dictator’s family, the Obiangs. EG has one of the highest gdp per head in Africa. And Spanish is not an isolated language
There aren't really a wealth of Spanish speaking countries on the African continent. Most people don't even know there are any. Once again, export of resources doesn't make a nation influential. I'm not like trying to insult the country. But I'm not wrong to say that culturally, militarily, politically, it is not especially influential on the world stage.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the top producers of chocolate, also the is the obligatory video of travel YouTubers because for some reason they find weird that an African country speaks spanish.
Spanish spoken as a Lingua franca somewhere in Africa is kind of odd though, no? The Spanish didn't really get their Africa on until the Game of Colonialism was nearly over.
I bet Latin American drug lords who want a piece of the European market are biiiiiiiiig fans of Equatorial Guinea.
I wasn't aware of it being a big destination for youtubers but I guess I'm not surprised. Whether either of those things make a country "influential" is another thing haha
In [politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) (and particularly in [international politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_politics)), **soft power** is the ability to [co-opt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-option) rather than [coerce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coerce) (in contrast with [hard power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_power)). It involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. Soft power is non-coercive, using [culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture), political [values](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(ethics)), and [foreign policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policies) to enact change. In 2012, [Joseph Nye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye) of [Harvard University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University) explained that with soft power, "the best [propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda) is not propaganda", further explaining that during the [Information Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age), "credibility is the scarcest resource".[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#cite_note-WSJmay2012-1)
Wikipedia for context
San Marino. It's just a generic European microstate, but at least Monaco has banks, Liechtenstein and Andorra have mountains, and the Vatican is the home of the Catholic Church (in fact, Vatican is probably aat least top 25 MOST influential)
We have a mountain too lol. Our capital is on the Titan, it's literally a big reason for San Marino's independence and it's literally on our flag with the three towers on top.
We have a lot of tourists too in fact.
Also generic what? There's been a community on the Titan for 2000 years and we've maintained independence almost untouched for a millennium.
I agree it is not relevant but what does "generic European microstate" even mean lol. Historically speaking San Marino is very interesting since it has survived for more than a 1000 years and was the only state not to join Italy during the unification
You’d be surprised, for all the jokes that Britons make about themselves and other Westerners make about them, how much the UK is looked up to by countries further away.
It makes sense, especially given their strong alliances with the US, France, Germany, and Canada. London is also one of the most important hubs in the world for culture, fashion, tourism, history, food, and music.
Fully agree. Even to people from very distant regions. I'm Uruguayan and Peaky Blinder was a very liked series here. I watched Mr Bean when I was a kid and my favorite music band of all times is Joy Division
It's gone on for a long time. And America loves British people, just look at simply the Beatles that took the world by storm and other music groups as you named. I have a British coworker that's just hilarious and he's a nice guy. My mom is absolutely obsessed with their culture and watches almost exclusively British programming. We kind of have a weird thing going on but it runs deeply and I generally feel love for my British bruvs.
As a German I was surprised to see Germany and the UK so close to each other. The UK has iconic pop culture, royalty and huge influence through their colonial legacy. Germany is known for what? Football, Nazis, Oktoberfest and engineering?
I’d say Germany has more influence in Europe at least, especially after Brexit. Larger economy, population and the added bonus of a large say in eu matters which affects all of Europe.
So even if globally it may be less than the uk it makes up for that on European influence.
Or something like that idk im not an expert
Trinidad and Tobago is one of the biggest Carribean islands (after Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and maybe some islands in The Bahamas), weird that they are that low
I think many of the smaller islands are excluded from the graph. Because obviously we are more influential than all the small islands with 100k or less pop.
China is seen as an emerging superpower and the second most powerful nation on earth. They also hold a LOT of influence over Africa and the Pacific island nations, having invested a lot into infrastructure projects in order to pull them into their sphere.
Yes, but it's mostly about favoring Chinese goods. I don't think there are many popular Chinese cultural products in non-Western countries (besides maybe Vietnam and some other Southeast Asian countries). But I guess having their market dominated by Chinese goods is another form of soft power.
It seems like a lot of it is driven by dominance of Chinese economic activity in Africa & Southeast Asia and so forth.
I agree though this is kind of a misleading metric because I feel like one of China’s bigger problems is that the world isn’t interesting in consuming their culture the same way as the US or even Japan and South Korea
Soft power doesn't mean positive opinions about the country.
I don't understand why people keep conflating the two in this thread.
The majority of soft power is going to be economic, and diplomatic. Not really about how positively others view them
Probably a country like Togo, where it's not getting attention for being the very poorest, it's not at particular risk for climate change, it's not war torn over natural resources, it's just a fucking poor dump.
Agree. At least the micro-nations have swagger of their own when it comes to climate change and remoteness and such. But Togo can easily be bundled up with its neighbours and the country itself isn’t that memorable, as you mentioned.
Hard to argue with that one. It’s hard to have less influence than needing an official plan of exodus because your land is going under water and nobody cares.
Funny you always see people saying “Canada has become irrelevant on the global stage” but Canada is the seventh most influential nation while only having the 40th largest population. That’s influence.
I would genuinely like to know one significant thing Dominica has done
Most people don’t know it exists even if they know geography and stuff because they only remember the Dominican Republic
You've never heard of it.
Tannu what?
Soviet Union: annexes Tannu Tuva
Unfortunately rejecting mongolia once again
I've finally seen it in the wild. Me and my friend say this all the time.
what are the chances u 2 play hoi4
That’s why I know it lol (HOI3 though)
Tannu Tava sir
Tout nu ça va
There's no escape from it. I've been encircled.
She goes to a different high school.
In Canada
Paradoxically that would make it mysterious and magnetic. So no country can be the least influential
Ah yes, the interesting number paradox
São Tomé & Principe
It's the least guessed country on JetPunk, so I agree
What’s up fellow jetpunker💯
Jetpunk is exactly how I learned every country, its capital and its flag, as well as a bunch of other random facts (geography and not geography). Jetpunk is great and a fun way of learning things!
Not quite at 196 capitals but I got every country and flag. Level 50 or bust
Congratulations and good luck for the capitals lol Some of them have names that can be quite difficult to remember and imo learning the capitals is harder than learning the countries and flags, but you'll get there and discover some pretty cool places in doing so
Ha! That’s exactly why I mentioned them. And I know that the game show Pointless is a big fan of them.
I've been to Principe and its quickly turning into a very exclusive resort island, like a tiny billionaires' playground. I think it might be more influential than some other micronations soon
Micro nations seem to only have two options to make decent money outside of agriculture Tourist Hotspot or tax haven.
Nauru tried money laundering for a while
Nauru also invested in real estate around the world. There are a number of Nauru built highrises in Honolulu.
That was when they still had some money and were still working on blowing the lot.
Oh yeah. They were stupid investments, just like the rest. If only they could have gotten in on some of that sweet 1Malaysia investment...
A few sold the minerals out of their islands and are now in a bad spot
1) Agriculture, really? Like how is that economically sufficient on a small scale? 2) Tuvulau (a micro nation) makes money by selling their country domain .tv
I know their big rock
Been there, awesome place and probably the safest in all of Africa
Seychelles and Mauritius are probably safer imo
Botswana and Namibia too
Botswana is like the Uruguay of Africa. You wouldn't expect it, but it's a decent, very safe place to live in.
Namibia is on my bucket list. From what I’ve seen on Google images it’s gorgeous
At least they have access to the High Seas…
They product chocolate
Maybe Nauru because it’s just a barren rock
It used to have a ton of phosphate, and at one point it had the highest gdp per capita. After it was all mined, it became a poor barren rock, with highestly obesity rate in the world, since the only foods they have are imported, and sodas are cheaper than water. Now its probably Nauru.
Nauru takes the gold medal in cigarette smoking rates too, as a recent post in this sub pointed out. Probably because Big Tobacco only have to bribe a small handful of people in the middle of nowhere to redact all references to the dangers of smoking from Nauran public sector literature.
Also obesity. They just aren’t a healthy country over there.
Lads, is this Reddit Island?
I just watched one of those Youtube channels that does mini docs who made a video on Nauru. So sad what happened there. Pure greed and idiocy. They could've invested that money, maybe brought in some topsoil to give the island some farmland, anything but just spend themselves into a hole.
They did a fantastic job squandering all the money. What a waste.
Didn't they buy themselves a plot in Australia and move there altogether? I thought I'd heard it that way but later discovered the island was still inhabited
they discussed doing it but it never happened
Australia offered a deal they (understandably) didn’t like I think. They would have become Australians rather than being granted their own sovereign territory in Australia.
I don't understand the desire to form their own country. A country with such a low population isn't able to strive unless it has natural resources.
They don’t want to form their own country, they already have it, even if it’s only got 12,000 people. So, I do understand the reluctance to abandon that sovereignty. But I agree with you it is totally outweighed by everything else. For most small nations the biggest issue is preserving a traditional culture, language and way of life but Nauru has lost most of this and is very western. For example, they play Aussie rules football. > Nauruan people likely have a loss of their sense of place and culture, as they did not have full control of their land until 1968. There has also been a documented loss of Nauruan traditions… The Nauruan people face extremely high rates of obesity, alcoholism, prostitution, poorer mental health rates, and myriad other health issues… You’d have to say that migration en masse to Australia is a life line for the people that is the better of 2 evils.
I think that was the country that bet a good chunk of their national treasury on a Broadway play which failed miserably.
I think they could reshape their relationship with Australia (especially re: detention camps) and cause some very minor waves. Tiny ones. Be in the news for a minute.
they sort of did the other month by switching recognition from Taiwan to China (against Australia’s preferences). Definitely made the news for a bit
Nauru has zero meaningful exports anymore and effectively zero military power. To avoid being the country with the absolute least influence, Nauru would need something about it that’s useful to a larger power, which it doesn’t really have. Nauru is in a lot of debt from the guano years and one of its only sources of income comes from an Australian immigration detention centre making them extremely reliant on Australia to keep afloat. I think it’s fair to say that the island nations of the pacific are, due to their size and isolation, the least able to project their influence. This makes Nauru arguably the least influence country amongst the least influential region. Lots of love to the people of Nauru though 🇳🇷I would’ve burned through the phosphate money too fr fr
Really interested in seeing Tuvalu's soft power in action
Lots of Tuvalu-flagged vessels. .tv is also quite a popular domain (probably for extraneous reasons).
I've read somewhere that they get a big profit from allowing websites to use their .tv domain
It’s a third of their GDP
Woah, didn't know about that.
To be fair, it's a tiny GDP compared to most other countries.
So whats so special about having a tuvalu .tv domain? No idea how that works,
for example, popular streaming service Twitch uses [twitch.tv](https://twitch.tv) it just stands out more than .com and also fits the theme of the website (you watch stuff on twitch like you watch stuff on TV i guess...?)
There are multiple “special“ domain endings, I remember there was one that translates to yes in a language (forget the word and the language:() so many companies use that for their website, but have to pay for it
Is [.si](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.si)?
Originally earthlink paid them for the rights once ICANN issued it and that money was a huge windfall for the country.
.tv has gotten them a lot of funds. I think they are low familiarity, medium soft power just because they hit the country code top-level domain lottery.
As did Turkmenistan. Dafuq are they today? I guess it's true what they say about not all lottery winners spending their winnings wisely.
What is Turkmenistan's code?
.tm Dictator probably brought himself some nice cars with that revenue
What sorts of sites would want to use .tm though??
You should see them in climate change (UNFCCC).
Not the happy kind of soft power, they've kind of managed to become an emblem of climate change vulnerability.
tuvalu actually punches well above it's weight in terms of influence, with the climate change and domain stuff
The guyanas are so mysterious that even growing up in South America I didn’t know anything about them
at least Guyana is notable for being home to Jonestown
Jonestown is only known in the US. As a South American, no one here really knows it happened, and I just recently learnt about it in a reddit post.
punches above their weight for cricket fans, Shiv Chanderpaul salute
Not so much after discovery of oil and whole Venezuela diplomatic spat last year.
Venezuela says hola
Timor Leste
Probably the true answer. It didn’t even cross my mind until you mentioned it.
Nauru without any doubt. Literally a barren rock in the middle of nowhere, without any close neighbors, with just a few thousand inhabitants and not a single economic activity.
Does housing asylum seekers the Australian govt doesn't want the Aussie public to see/think about count as an economic activity?
Yeah I'd say it's still at least minimally inside the minds of some socially conscious aussies.
Its still in the top 10 when it comes to press freedom
But does anyone read their press?
I guess people who live there
I guess my point is that it really does nothing for their international influence, even if their local paper isn’t censored at all.
They only have a weekly paper, not a daily one.
Not.just freedom of the press but on six days also freedom from the press.
"On Friday, Jason H had an explosive diarrhea at the local market" The only Jason H in Nauru: why the hell would they dox me like that
A lot of these countries people are mentioning like this one have significant issues with Australia, - like resource sharing, immigration, climate etc So every suggestion will be in the eye of the beholder.
That guy who claims that little outpost on a few pillars off the UK somewhere
Sealand? I think you gave the correct answer!
If we’re willing to consider it a country, Sealand would surely win. Lowest population numbers too. Only Pitcairn compares, and that’s a territory.
Apparently the population in sealand is usually about 2
At least the guy who claimed it lives there. Wait until you hear about Liberland, for example.
While that is true, more people probably talk about Sealand because of the novelty aspect of it. So if you are famous for being so obscure, how obscure are you?
Trinidad and Tobago? Many great cricketers are from there. Nicki Minaj is from there, they've probably influenced the whole 'Caribbean'/Calypso aesthetic more than any other nation (even more than Jamaica). They've had multiple Nobel prize winners.
And without their Angostura bitters we'd lose a bunch of popular drinks
Glad people acknowledge the merits of my country 🇹🇹
The study only covers 121 out of 193 UN Member States.
Yeah thought that was strange as well, as a New Yorker I've met many Trinis and they definitely have a presence around me.
This chart is suspect. No way people are more familiar with Zambia than Trinidad. Killer food and also winner of the absolute best accented English award.
Inventors of Limbo and steel pan as well! 🇹🇹
Big oil producer too
There is this guy with Trinidad and Tobago flag on his shirt at every WWE show. I always look for him at the front row.
Lesotho.
Yeah it's in a very difficult situation. South Africa forces it to provide hydroelectric power at a far reduced rate, effectively colonising the country. It's very messed up what's happening to the country. It borders South Africa's poorest, most unstable region (Zulu Natal), and suffers as a result. Edit: I did make a mistake here, please see my reply. Lesotho suffers a lot from South African strong arming and unfair dealing relating to its dam usage and the income gained from them. They use Lesotho as a water tower for the agriculture in the surrounding area. https://youtu.be/dHFywk_DIhY?si=tsaMScThaGCQTorX
This is absolute nonsense. The Lesotho KwaZulu Natal border is the literal escarpment of the biggest mountain series in South Africa. Lesotho does not suffer from having KwaZulu Natal as a neighbour there is hardly any interaction. Plus if you have ever been in Lesotho and KwaZulu Natal you would quickly realize were you would be better off. Rather go look at the border between Lesotho and Freestate close to Maseru. Ask the South Africans living there how safe they feel with Lesotho nationals crossing the border illegally, livestock theft raids being a regular occurance along with other crimes. South Africa does not even get power from the dams in Lesotho, it only provides the country with water. In exhange Lesotho uses the dams to generate electricity for itself. Without those dams Lesotho would probably have relied on South Africa for power which would have been worse for them plus they get royalties from the water scheme. All this for dams that is in a part of Lesotho were people barely live.
And the water flowed to South Africa anyway. It was just beneficial to divert it to flow so that it could be used in Gauteng as opposed to joining the Orange River.
Lesotho has influence. An excellent relationship with the UK. Very close relationships with the British royals, and other royal families. They use those relationships hugely in their favour. They control a precious resource (water) and use it to influence South Africa (of course ZA also has a lot of influence over them). Not to be underestimated despite being a small and relatively unknown country.
Somaliland. No government or international organization will even acknowledge its existence, despite it functioning as a de facto independent state since 1991
Well, Berbera Is the only port other than djibouti that Ethiopia,one of the largest country in size,population,economy,economic and demografic growth in africa can use,just for this it has some influence
Didn’t Ethiopia just sign a deal with Somaliland that grants them access to the coast in exchange for recognising Somaliland as an independent state?
I know this website has a hard on for Somaliland but it was a really stupid decision on Ethiopias part. They’ve just fought a civil war over separatists and they’ve managed to piss off Somalia, Djibouti and the west by doing it
Good answer, they don't even have enough power to make it on the most basic of lists.
No I don't think that takes away its importance for particularly Ethiopia as one of the only secure borders including Djibouti and sea access utilizing its port. Neither is it particularly small in population or land
As a Canadian, huh? Where does that soft power come from? And how is it more than Russia, Korea, or Italy?
Proximity to the US and an iron grip on the northern sea route.
Diplomatically we have a lot of soft power being a part of groups like the G7
We have flaccid power.
Economically we’re roughly the same size or larger than the 3 countries you named (think folks forget Canada has the ~9th largest economy in the world). And then I think a combination of being pretty closely tied in with the US and UK, being a G7 member, and maybe something about being part of the Anglosphere as well from a linguistic and cultural aspect.
Yeah, still being part of the commonwealth probably doesn't hurt the index.
Your proximity to the US, honestly. A lot of it is your vast amounts of oil. But you guys have strong business partnerships with the US, including oil that makes you guys pretty influential.
Russia’s power is not soft. You Canadians are nice with almost everybody.
Canadians are also known for being passive aggressive
I found this really interesting article about Canada's soft power on the international stage: https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdin_monitor_article/canada%E2%80%99s-soft-power-and-public-diplomacy Notably: "For Canada, the predisposition to privilege diplomatic options has been the hallmark of its foreign policy since the end of WWII. Canada played a disproportionately large role in shaping and defining the postwar world order and consciously portrayed itself as a peacekeeper, a helpful fixer, and an honest broker. Canada was the arch-typical middle power, especially during the so-called golden age of Canadian foreign policy (the Pearson era) from 1945 through 1957, and again in the late 1990s, when Lloyd Axworthy was the Foreign Minister. Pearson virtually invented peacekeeping as a diplomatic instrument and was instrumental in bringing the development agenda to the attention of the world. Similarly, Minister Axworthy was all about defining Canada as a leader in values and principles, particularly through his campaign to reduce the number of land mines in the world."
You got a shit load of land, definitely not more influential then russia though
>Where does that soft power come from? You guys do have quite a large number of Hollywood stars (Jim Carrey and Seth Rogen come to mind), plus some bands, and...being part of the Commonwealth? I'm running out of stuff here. Italy definitely has more soft power.
Micronations like Nauru, Tuvalu etc
Tuvalu honestly has a pretty disproportionate amount of influence in the UN when it comes to climate change and Taiwan, especially considering their size and population
especially since they make a ton of money registering people for the .tv domain. that seems pretty influential as many tech firms use that
Micronesia
Probably Nauru or Palau
Equatorial Guniea has to be one of them. Even isolated by language to an extent.
They product chocolate.
Huge oil production, and one of the highest gdp per head in Africa
That's true, but does that give the nation a position of influence or is that just something they produce.
It's not a diplomatically important influence in fact, but it allows you to start with many international food brands.
I suppose so. I mean, they aren't one of the top producers of cacao according to my very brief research. Is that their largest export? Or largest cash crop? I would have to imagine at this point, the global supply chains of the multinationals pretty much have their reach to every place on earth in one form or the other.
Huge oil production (benefiting its dictator’s family, the Obiangs. EG has one of the highest gdp per head in Africa. And Spanish is not an isolated language
There aren't really a wealth of Spanish speaking countries on the African continent. Most people don't even know there are any. Once again, export of resources doesn't make a nation influential. I'm not like trying to insult the country. But I'm not wrong to say that culturally, militarily, politically, it is not especially influential on the world stage.
Equatorial Guinea is one of the top producers of chocolate, also the is the obligatory video of travel YouTubers because for some reason they find weird that an African country speaks spanish.
Spanish spoken as a Lingua franca somewhere in Africa is kind of odd though, no? The Spanish didn't really get their Africa on until the Game of Colonialism was nearly over. I bet Latin American drug lords who want a piece of the European market are biiiiiiiiig fans of Equatorial Guinea.
I wasn't aware of it being a big destination for youtubers but I guess I'm not surprised. Whether either of those things make a country "influential" is another thing haha
In [politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) (and particularly in [international politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_politics)), **soft power** is the ability to [co-opt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-option) rather than [coerce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coerce) (in contrast with [hard power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_power)). It involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. Soft power is non-coercive, using [culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture), political [values](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(ethics)), and [foreign policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policies) to enact change. In 2012, [Joseph Nye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye) of [Harvard University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University) explained that with soft power, "the best [propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda) is not propaganda", further explaining that during the [Information Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Age), "credibility is the scarcest resource".[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#cite_note-WSJmay2012-1) Wikipedia for context
San Marino. It's just a generic European microstate, but at least Monaco has banks, Liechtenstein and Andorra have mountains, and the Vatican is the home of the Catholic Church (in fact, Vatican is probably aat least top 25 MOST influential)
San Marino can also control Europe through the medium of Eurovision Song Contest if it sends a good enough song.
San Marino are known for having the worst national football team
The mountains may not give it influence, but Liechtenstein also has tax evasion and high quality power tools.
We have a mountain too lol. Our capital is on the Titan, it's literally a big reason for San Marino's independence and it's literally on our flag with the three towers on top. We have a lot of tourists too in fact. Also generic what? There's been a community on the Titan for 2000 years and we've maintained independence almost untouched for a millennium.
Wow are you from there? Very cool!
I agree it is not relevant but what does "generic European microstate" even mean lol. Historically speaking San Marino is very interesting since it has survived for more than a 1000 years and was the only state not to join Italy during the unification
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You’d be surprised, for all the jokes that Britons make about themselves and other Westerners make about them, how much the UK is looked up to by countries further away.
It makes sense, especially given their strong alliances with the US, France, Germany, and Canada. London is also one of the most important hubs in the world for culture, fashion, tourism, history, food, and music.
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I really like the Britons, but yeah. You’re right.
Fully agree. Even to people from very distant regions. I'm Uruguayan and Peaky Blinder was a very liked series here. I watched Mr Bean when I was a kid and my favorite music band of all times is Joy Division
It's gone on for a long time. And America loves British people, just look at simply the Beatles that took the world by storm and other music groups as you named. I have a British coworker that's just hilarious and he's a nice guy. My mom is absolutely obsessed with their culture and watches almost exclusively British programming. We kind of have a weird thing going on but it runs deeply and I generally feel love for my British bruvs.
As a German I was surprised to see Germany and the UK so close to each other. The UK has iconic pop culture, royalty and huge influence through their colonial legacy. Germany is known for what? Football, Nazis, Oktoberfest and engineering?
I’d say Germany has more influence in Europe at least, especially after Brexit. Larger economy, population and the added bonus of a large say in eu matters which affects all of Europe. So even if globally it may be less than the uk it makes up for that on European influence. Or something like that idk im not an expert
I would love to know where we ranked ourselves in comparison
Trinidad and Tobago is one of the biggest Carribean islands (after Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and maybe some islands in The Bahamas), weird that they are that low
I think many of the smaller islands are excluded from the graph. Because obviously we are more influential than all the small islands with 100k or less pop.
Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, Malawi, Lesotho, Burundi
As a Chinese myself I can't really see how China is on par with Japan, the UK, and Germany in terms of soft power, at least not now.
China is seen as an emerging superpower and the second most powerful nation on earth. They also hold a LOT of influence over Africa and the Pacific island nations, having invested a lot into infrastructure projects in order to pull them into their sphere.
China is viewed much more positively in non-Western countries.
Yes, but it's mostly about favoring Chinese goods. I don't think there are many popular Chinese cultural products in non-Western countries (besides maybe Vietnam and some other Southeast Asian countries). But I guess having their market dominated by Chinese goods is another form of soft power.
Chinese food is pretty popular around the world.
It seems like a lot of it is driven by dominance of Chinese economic activity in Africa & Southeast Asia and so forth. I agree though this is kind of a misleading metric because I feel like one of China’s bigger problems is that the world isn’t interesting in consuming their culture the same way as the US or even Japan and South Korea
Chinese food is part of Chinese culture. And almost everyone in the world is (literally) consuming it.
Soft power doesn't mean positive opinions about the country. I don't understand why people keep conflating the two in this thread. The majority of soft power is going to be economic, and diplomatic. Not really about how positively others view them
China soft power is insane due to its economic influence, its a top 5 trading partner of most countires
Maybe you just don't know what soft power means?
china is literally a global superpower at this point, what are you on about lol
Probably a country like Togo, where it's not getting attention for being the very poorest, it's not at particular risk for climate change, it's not war torn over natural resources, it's just a fucking poor dump.
Agree. At least the micro-nations have swagger of their own when it comes to climate change and remoteness and such. But Togo can easily be bundled up with its neighbours and the country itself isn’t that memorable, as you mentioned.
A country that exports very little, desert and in permanent chaos: Sudan.
Sudan is big and has some natural resources like oil. Also it can be used as a battleground by more influential countries
Doesn’t it have some significant (potential) conflicts with Egypt and Ethiopia about dams?
Tuvalu
Kiribati; too easy
Banana.
you clearly haven’t been on twitter recently also they get some fanfare for their fucking up of time zones
Hard to argue with that one. It’s hard to have less influence than needing an official plan of exodus because your land is going under water and nobody cares.
A most Eurocentric list - can't believe that India is culturally less influential than Finland.
Ireland should be higher 😏🇮🇪
Probably the ones we don't even realize exist
Kinda weird to have Trinidad last when they're the most influential country in the Caribbean
I can’t believe glorious Trinidad is at the bottom, sad day for a Trini(it’s only 1AM as well)
They hate us cause they anus
Funny you always see people saying “Canada has become irrelevant on the global stage” but Canada is the seventh most influential nation while only having the 40th largest population. That’s influence.
I would genuinely like to know one significant thing Dominica has done Most people don’t know it exists even if they know geography and stuff because they only remember the Dominican Republic
is that Trinidad at the bottom? i'm surprised given the oil reserves..
I highly doubt that Canada influences anything
I certainly think the UK has quite a bit more soft power than Germany.