For the first time – ever – Afghanistan today played an international cricket match against...top-ranked neighbor Pakistan, with whom it has a relationship that is sometimes fraught with uneasiness, sometimes full of professions of brotherhood. The historic cricket match...both illustrated the love/hate relationship and helped fans on both sides of the border to forget, at least for a while, the tensions that exist between their countries.

Brand USA, a non-profit, public-private partnership, is to launch a global advertising campaign next month, as part of the country’s concerted effort in marketing tourism to the world. Symbolic as it may be, it sends an unmistakable signal reaffirming America’s openness and optimism, the very foundation of the country’s soft power.

The hallyu – or “Korean wave” as the phenomenon is known in Asia – is now spreading to Europe and the US, and spurring South Korea’s export earnings. Cultural exports are...giving the once reclusive country a global cachet for the first time, shaking off the war-torn images of the US comedy M*A*S*H.

China's soft power is not only coming from official diplomatic channels. Its average citizens have also been ambassadors for the country. Wherever the Chinese diaspora land, much evidence, anecdotal as well as statistical, confirms that the Chinese tend to become productive members of society without the help of affirmative action.

As the world becomes more and more "flat," per se, exchanges and communications become astonishingly bidirectional. And hybrid products are born through this bidirectional "flattening," process as you easily find in all manufactured and cultural products. Korean entertainment producers are smart enough to know how to blend ingredients for universal attraction...Therefore, pop culture is speedily eroding boundaries of nations, as any multinational companies do.

The strategy of the Indian state is clearly no longer limited to building infrastructure alone; it has moved to a domain where the production and projection of images of a prosperous nation has become as imperative a task as the creation of a prosperous nation itself.

While organisers hope London 2012's economic impact will be one of its main legacies, bringing £1bn of extra business over four years, some question the mixed message being projected by the GREAT campaign.

At a time when the rest of the world marvels at – or perhaps dreads – China’s rise, Beijing perceives a serious weakness in its own armor: the lack of soft power. For all its economic woes, the West still possesses ample soft power as evidenced by its cultural domination. Behind China’s worries also lurk fears about regime stability.