Student blog: What PR can learn from the UAE's soft power strategy
By Abdalrahman Tawfik, Media Communication student, American University of Sharjah
Joseph Nye called soft power "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments" (Soft Power, 2004). Attraction, in other words, instead of sticks and carrots.
What interests me about the UAE is not that it accepted that idea. Plenty of governments say they believe in it. The UAE gave it an institution. A Soft Power Council was set up in 2017, and the national strategy it produced rests on six declared pillars of public diplomacy.
The order matters. Policy moved first, then the message. The Document on Human Fraternity was signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019, and the Abrahamic Family House, a mosque, church and synagogue built to identical dimensions, opened in 2023. Only then was there something to say about tolerance.
Expo 2020 Dubai is where you can watch it working. It drew 24.1 million visits with 192 countries taking part, and EY projects it will add AED 154.9 billion to the economy between 2013 and 2042. Perception shifted too. The UAE now sits tenth of 193 nation brands in Brand Finance's Global Soft Power Index 2026, and second in the world for generosity.
Simon Anholt made this argument long before any of it (Journal of Brand Management, 1998): countries earn recognisable identities through what they do, not through what they say about themselves.
That is what I keep turning over as a student entering this profession. A campaign cannot carry a reputation that the policy behind it will not support.
Sources
Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), p. x.
"The UAE Soft Power Strategy", The Official Portal of the UAE Government (u.ae). Launched by the UAE Soft Power Council, September 2017.
"Expo 2020 Dubai projected to add AED 154.9 billion to UAE economy", UAE Government Media Office, 31 March 2023, reporting an EY study.
Brand Finance, Global Soft Power Index 2026.
Simon Anholt, "Nation-brands of the twenty-first century", Journal of Brand Management, 5(6), 1998, pp. 395–406.
"Inauguration of the Abrahamic Family House", L’Osservatore Romano, 16 February 2023; Document on Human Fraternity, signed Abu Dhabi, 4 February 2019.
About the author:
Full name: Abdalrahman Tawfik Programme: Media Communication student Institution: American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates.
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