Shimkus, who also served as commanding officer of the U.S. medical ship Comfort, said the United States must not only focus on its military might, but also on its humanitarian power, by providing health care, infrastructure and other aid to people who need it.

In the cases of Indonesia and Pakistan, panelists argued that humanitarian aid appears to have a had a positive correlation with public views of the donor nation among citizens of the recipient countries.

Meanwhile, we must all ask ourselves, as individual citizens, how we can help. This might mean private donations, as in previous humanitarian emergencies in Indonesia after the tsunami or Haiti after the earthquake, or it could mean pushing elected representatives toward a more robust response.

Between humanitarian tours of the Pacific Rim and South Pacific, as well as natural disasters such as typhoons, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes, such a fleet of vessels wouldn’t be idle. The service they could provide the Japanese people, and the goodwill they could generate abroad, could be of far greater value than resources spent on military power.

While media attention typically focuses on the hard power role of the US military in the Pacific, the US Navy also invests significant time and energy in the soft power potential of humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in the region

Through its provision of education, medical treatment and small-business support, India has projected considerable soft power in Afghanistan. It provides 2,000 scholarships to Afghans annually for schooling and training in India, including for 500 Afghan civil servants.

He said Taiwan needs also to combine its economic power with diplomacy to show the world the country's national strength and soft power....Over the past three years, he noted, Taiwan has participated in many international humanitarian aid projects in countries struck by natural disasters.

From chic styles to cuisine, from cinema to comics, Taiwan is trying to project its soft power across the globe in an effort to step out of China’s shadow