ABSTRACT
Soft power, from its first articulation at the end of Cold War, served as the core idea underpinning the public elements of diplomacy around the world. Public diplomacy had flourished in the Cold War as a set of activities by which the leading nations sought to advance their foreign policy through engagement with foreign publics. Soft power was the perfect idea for the post-Cold War world. It succeeded because it fitted an international system looking to understand how the West did so well and Soviet Russia so poorly. Reputation has long been a part of statecraft with ancient kings understanding the alchemy whereby their own person merged with the image and standing of the state. Disputes over precedence and deference were occupational hazards of international meetings. The experience of Great Power competition and the pandemic at the turn of the second decade of the twenty-first century has jolted the world back into a dual focus of reputation and collaboration.
