Soft power and public diplomacy: Opportunities for independent Tajikistan

This paper analyzes Tajikistan's soft power potential and the possibilities of its conversion into an applied foreign policy resource through public diplomacy mechanisms. The reason behind the selection of this Central Asian nation is the fact that contemporary research discourse on soft power and public diplomacy mainly focuses on the experience and practice of leading global nations. The similar potential of small, less ambitious states often appears out of regular scientific analysis. The capacity of Tajikistan's soft power is determined based on certain international specialized ranking methodology, Tajikistan's domestic field-oriented statistics, its goal-setting document objectives and the practical steps of the country. Thus, the paper defines four most promising factors/drivers that seem to constitute Tajikistan's soft power potential at the modern stage - the country's authentic culture heritage, its tourist sights and their growing appeal for foreigners, successful global initiatives in the sphere of water cooperation and presence of a big Tajik diaspora abroad. If the first two factors are related to the internal situation in the republic and require demonstration of openness and specific domestic reforms, the other two increase the international recognition of the country and can contribute to the enhancement of Tajik nation's image. The conducted analysis suggests that, despite having solid soft power capabilities, Tajikistan has not been quite successful in turning it into an applied foreign policy resource. The republic has a controversial international image that seems to be constructed under the influence of many factors some of which are politically charged or based on the established stereotypes about the country. Such an image of Tajikistan is observed not only in countries far from Central Asia but also in those within the CIS space, in particular, in Russia. It is supposed that such an image is formed largely because of Tajikistan's weak representation on the Internet; negative information about this nation appears to prevail in major search engines. The country's lack of competitive international information and media tools is also its significant trouble spot in this context. Based on the above-mentioned facts, the author concludes that such state of affairs, firstly, demands stepping up public diplomacy efforts, especially in its info-communication dimension, secondly, increases the importance of institutionalization of Tajikistan's public-diplomacy activity. Those steps would provide the young republic with an additional tool, compatible with modern requirements, for pursuing its foreign policy objectives in the 21st century.

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