The success of Obama, Modi, and others has been particularly good for digital diplomacy, which is the use of new communication technologies to help achieve diplomatic goals. It is hard to even imagine how many countries and heads of state didn't have a Twitter or Facebook account not that long ago.

Of the total contributions of nearly $259,000 — slightly over 1 million shekels — about $237,000 came from American donors, according to records made public by Israel’s State Comptroller and first published by BuzzFeed.

The 13th Pravasi Bharat Diwas, starting Wednesday in Gandhinagar, will be used by the Narendra Modi government to showcase not just opportunities unleashed by a wave of economic reforms but also emphasize use of India's soft power to conduct its foreign policy.

Governments around the world are using stealthy strategies to manipulate the media.  Censorship is flourishing in the information age. In theory, new technologies make it more difficult, and ultimately impossible, for governments to control the flow of information.

Sanctions failed to achieve what dialogue, openness and cooperation, and examples of economic advancement – all forms of soft power – could and did instead.  So don’t count soft power out yet. It’s not dead.

The continuous engagement through economic diplomacy helps a country like Liberia in advancing its economic interests and equally and importantly, those of its partners. (...) Economic diplomacy pools skill personnel in government and the private sector to understand and negotiate trade, investment and economic issues from the national development perspective of a country’s strength, limitations, opportunities and threats.

In an interview with The Washington Post in November, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the U.S.-Japan alliance “the cornerstone of Japanese diplomacy,” a stance supported by the U.S. State Department, whose website asserts, “Japan contributes irreplaceable political, financial and moral support to U.S.-Japan diplomatic efforts.” However, such official comments on Tokyo-Washington ties are misleading, believes Sayo Saruta, the director of Japanese think tank New Diplomacy Initiative.

Iran's President Hassan Rowhani said Sunday that foreign investors should no longer be viewed as a threat and signaled his country's decades-long isolation from the world economy could soon end.