The Qatar crisis raises two issues in the field of international relations today. The first is to disprove the mainstream Cold War-era view that small states cannot play a significant role in global affairs. The second is that big powers always use hard means to take control of ambitious, small states in order to preserve the status quo.

Turkey uses Hagia Sophia as a tool of cultural diplomacy to exert both soft and hard power. The monument is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been a museum since 1935. [...] At this stage, the Turkish government is expected to use Hagia Sophia as a negotiating tool in its diplomatic struggle over Kurdistan and other geopolitical issues.

Zhou Enlai was foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 until 1958 and its first premier. He defined diplomacy as a continuation of warfare by other means. In the contemporary world, that definition includes an understanding of the concepts of hard and soft power. Joseph Nye developed the idea of soft power as the ability to attract and persuade rather than applying economic, military and political hard power.

President Donald Trump's decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement is yet another manifestation of how he continues to see U.S. interests as narrowly economic. Had the president a more expansive view of both the nation's interests and influence, he would have kept the U.S. in the accord. Instead, he not only harmed global efforts to address a pressing problem, but also deprived the U.S. of an important source of so-called soft power. In a world in which military might is increasingly difficult and costly to use, America will suffer from this loss. 

Doing nothing when war crimes are committed is immoral. It is also bad policy. But a response to war crimes such as those perpetrated by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad must be more than a display of righteousness; it must become an element of a broader foreign policy initiative. This is the challenge facing the Trump administration after the missile strike launched by the United States