525 Olivier Urrutia The role of Think Tanks in the definition and application of defence policies and strategies defines three main types of resources that a state needs to affirm its leadership: military, economic and intangible resources.40 As regards military resources, the United States has a marked advantage over its direct competitors – China and Russia. As for economic resources, the emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are becoming more and more competitive. Intangible resources like culture are the most generalised. Spain stands out thanks to its industry, language, food, culture, tourism,41 sport42 and schools.43 The result is the conversion of the enemy into a consumer and the creation of an affective dependency. Soft power has become part of the process of a renewed and global diplomatic exercise directed at the entire population and no longer simply at the elite. Within this conceptual framework, think tanks are a soft power instrument and represent an alternative for a state to be able to develop its leadership at the international level. It has been proven that American, German and French think tanks have managed to export themselves beyond their national borders using in situ offices and teams. Unlike their German and American counterparts, French think tanks are only to be found in Brussels due to their limited financial capacities. However, the Spanish think tank culture lacks this strategic vision and pays the price for its lack of material resources when trying to share its vision and get its voice heard. Think tanks with a physical presence abroad act, through their experts, as intellectual embassies when defining standards – economic, cultural, political, legal – by integrating working groups into the bodies of supranational institutions. The phenomenon of the internationalisation of think tanks “opens possibilities for international and global leadership and for the production of global thinking in order to find solutions to global problems, along with creating global “hubs” or capitals of thought”.44 The United States and its think tanks “occupy” Brussels, Ankara, Berlin, Paris, Bucharest, Warsaw, Tunis, Cambridge, London and Doha, running the global intellectual arena. The United States has a greater presence in Brussels than France or Spain does, demonstrating far more active intellectual diplomacy. Soft law, the strategy for the code, involves influencing the adoption of norms, 40 Ibid. 41 See Marca España for all information: http://marcaespana.es 42 See La industria del deporte, Geoeconomia, Instituto Choiseul, N°7 43 See the 2010 Forbes global ranking of Business Schools. Spain has 4 of the top 10 schools: http:// etudiant.aujourdhui.fr/etudiant/info/classement-des-mba-le-classement-mondial-selon-forbes.html 44 MONTOBBIO, Manuel, La geopolítica del pensamiento: los think tanks y política exterior, Barcelona: Producción CIDOB Edicions, 01/2013, p.19-26, Available under: http://www.realinstitutoel-cano. org/wps/wcm/connect/94f9dc004e4455a6ac4abd1063f90368/DT2-013_Montobbio_Geopolitica_think-tanks_ politica_exterior_Spain_España.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=94f9dc004e4455a6ac4ab d1063f90368
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