I grew up on Hollywood films and MTV. English novels, from gothic romances to classic masterpieces. Disney cartoons and US comics. Yet, I grew up in Karachi and had never in my childhood set foot outside of Pakistan.

In my college years when I did find myself in small-town America among a group of born and bred Americans; they didn’t know what to make of my familiarity of US classic rock. Friends in Karachi were more used to my strange taste in alt rock than those Americans my age.

When I was learning guitar from an American boy I had a crush on, he laughed and said it was so funny that I knew Bob Marley songs. My 60-year-old professor strumming his guitar at a campfire was startled when I sang Simon and Garfunkel along with him – when the other American students didn’t know the lyrics.

However, no Pakistani would bat an eyelid if one of us got up and belted out a Taylor Swift or crooned a Springsteen number. We have all consumed the same imported diet for entertainment for our reading, watching and listening pleasure. Kids in Lyari could imitate Michael Jackson’s breakdance when he was alive as well as they can do Neymar’s stepover cut during FIFA season.

Western entertainment and art was more accessible to youth in Pakistan even before the internet. Now that’s a mind-boggling statement that ought to give pause when you’re thinking about the West’s use of soft diplomacy.

Cultural or soft power diplomacy involves influencing and winning hearts through cultural, intellectual, and emotional exchanges rather than through hard power tactics like military force or economic sanctions.