While drinking tea by the Bosphorus a few days ago, I looked up and there sailing past me was the Moskva, a formidable-looking Russian missile cruiser returning home from its mission in support of Russia's Syrian pal, Bashar Assad. [...]Turkey possesses the political stability, economic vitality and military strength to play an ever greater role in its tumultuous region and beyond.

A high-level panel of foreign policy and social media experts recently questioned “the U.S. government’s ability to serve as a credible voice against the (ISIS) terrorist group’s propaganda,” a sad commentary on the current state of our government’s ineffectual efforts to counter an ISIS social media recruiting and propaganda campaign.

The key question in assessing Europe’s power resources is whether the EU will retain enough cohesion to speak with a single voice on a wide range of international issues, or remain a limited grouping defined by its members’ different national identities, political cultures and foreign policies. The answer varies by issue. 

It's been dubbed “fashion diplomacy” but critics of Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop say the ­Louboutin-loving politician’s hosting of overseas runway shows has gone too far. From celebrating Australian designers creating “modest wear” at an Islamic fashion festival to a fashion showcase in the Taj Mahal, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on promoting Australia as “a creative and innovative nation.”

Italy has called on China to contribute more to the fight against terrorism and help stabilise the Middle East and Northern Africa, as the world’s number two economy shows an increasing interest and exposure in the region, its ambassador to Beijing says.

The Philippines' decision to join China's multilateral development bank marks Manila's renewed effort to befriend Beijing via “economic diplomacy” despite the South China Sea dispute, an analyst said.

The Obama administration is overhauling its faltering efforts to combat the online propaganda of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, U.S. officials said, reflecting rising White House frustration with largely ineffective efforts so far to cut into ISIS’s use of social media to draw recruits and incite attacks. Officials will create a counter­­terrorism task force, which will be based at the Department of Homeland Security but aims to enlist dozens of federal and local agencies.

The latest iteration of China’s decade-old strategy of promoting indigenous innovation, “Internet Power” signals that the Party is no longer just reactive to the existential threat of the Internet; it is now seeking to utilize it for its own economic and political ends.