The EU has been applying pressure on Ukraine, with some European leaders announcing a boycott of the upcoming Euro 2012 soccer tournament in Ukraine and others pulling out of a summit of Central and Eastern European leaders scheduled to take place in Ukraine later this month.

APDS Blogger: Emina Vukic

Author’s Note: This blog is the edited version of a speech I gave at the recent NATO conference on The Power of Soft Power.

When Joseph Nye first coined the term soft power over 20 years ago, the United States and Europe were in a different place than they are today.

FOR a lesson in the use of ‘soft power’, turn to Beijing. China has made culture and people-to-people contacts an essential cornerstone of its global diplomacy. The key focus so far has been on countries in the neighbourhood, with China working hard to defuse perceptions that it seeks to dominate the rest of Asia. The rest of the world is now also getting a taste of China’s cultural diplomacy.

The EU has considerable soft power which can bring about reforms in human rights and level-playing-field trading that have not only improved the lives of its own citizens but will also improve those who aspire to join (eurozone membership is something else).

Two weeks ago the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee warned that cuts of almost £40 million to the Foreign Office would lead to a "diminution of the UK's influence and soft power", leaving it with a budget smaller than that of Kent County Council.

APDS Blogger: Aparajitha Vadlamannati

At USC on April 6, the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars held a conference on the Future of Public Diplomacy. Experts, academics, and practitioners gathered to discuss what lies ahead for the field of public diplomacy. There were a couple of major takeaways from the conference.

What it does mean is that European nations will have to break their decades-old dependence on the United States for taking care of their defense, providing the strategic thinking for them and keeping Europe’s own backyard — the Balkans — stable.