India's soft power has now been on display for at least a couple of decades: ... Bollywood's prodigious celluloid fare has long drawn huge audiences in significant parts of Asia, Africa, and beyond; India's English-language novelists have often edged out native British writers for the prestigious Man Booker Prize; and, of course, yoga studios have become all but ubiquitous in the United States.

The U.S. and Iran have been at odds for decades.... But in Japan, a nation that tries to maintain good relations with both countries, a major exhibition featuring the work of one of America’s most recognizable artists is showing how appreciation for good art can bring even the most intractable foes closer together.

Brussels has welcomed Beijing's strategy to boost its soft power by spreading its colorful cultures across globe after years of economic success, said a top European Union (EU) culture official....European Commission's Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said culture plays an important part in achieving Beijing's aspiration of gaining more global influence and sharpening its soft power.

The effective use of soft power in all its forms is another important resource in our work. We intend to cooperate with civil society institutions, the expert community, business circles and mass media. We will actively use the potential of organizations established last year and other opportunities that we have with civil society in addition to traditional diplomatic instruments.

Moving forward, we need a far more neutral baseline in assessing power based not on a latent accounting of inputs such as nuclear stockpiles and Hollywood films produced, but on outputs: does it work?...As a student of diplomatic theory, the greatest myth elevated by the notion of ‘soft power’ is its self-identification with diplomacy and their collective antithetical role to ‘hard’ or military power.

Just as in relationships between people, states generally treat different categories of other states differently: With friends they appeal to loyalty and shared values; with allies they appeal mainly to shared interests; with clients or subordinates, they also appeal mainly to shared interests, but with a twist given the power equation.