Belying speculation about his recall in a section of the media, India's Ambassador to Nepal Rakesh Sood is set for an upgrade as the country's deputy national security adviser.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pressed on with a charm offensive in India on Thursday, offering support for New Delhi's bid for a greater role in the United Nations and agreeing on an ambitious target of $100 billion in trade between the rising Asian powers by 2015.

"Incredible India." For tourism purposes, that slogan has served India well, but it is insufficient to convey the identity of a rising world power...More and more, India is a significant player in world affairs, and yet it lacks a consistent profile that it can present to the rest of the world.

The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), two years in the making, was presented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday as a foreign-policy roadmap that sees "leading through civilian power" as a way to save lives and money. Among other elements, the review seeks to reorganize State Department bureaucracies, hand over the Obama administration's health and agriculture programs to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and hire more staff.

The United States could not achieve its global goals without the co-operation of the UAE and other countries in the region, a former US diplomat said in the capital this week.

FP's Josh Rogin ably summarizes the State Department's rollout of the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), an exercise that was clearly inspired by the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review. This was Anne-Marie Slaughter's signal achievement during her tenure as Director of Policy Planning,* which leads to the obvious question of whether it really matters.

Leading through civilian power saves lives and money. With the right tools, training, and leadership, our diplomats and development experts can defuse crises before they explode and create new opportunities for economic growth. We can find new partners to share burdens and new solutions to problems that might otherwise require military action.