Daya Kishan Thussu’s Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood (Sage, 2016) is a rare resource on the subject of the country’s ‘soft power’. As the author himself claims, “on the soft power of China itself there are at least half a dozen books published in English – many more in Mandarin – while in the case of India the terrain is blank, despite its large array of soft power elements”. 

Australian animals have long been dispatched internationally as a form of diplomacy. In the past two years however, it has been koalas, rather than the platypi, who have shot to international notice as key Australian contenders in political power plays. 

Soft power has become strategically important for China and is regarded an important component of its “comprehensive national power” , a measure of its own national power.

Joseph Nye has been the preeminent thought leader on the issue of power dynamics and relationships connecting global actors. [...] What is the future of this American century? My guess is that among the range of possible futures, ones in which a new challenger such as Europe, Russia, India, Brazil or China surpasses the United States and precipitates the end of the American centrality to the global balance of power are not impossible, but not very likely.

Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has expressed deep skepticism about the value of U.S. alliances. His is a very 19th-century view of the world. [...] The real problem for the United States is not that it will be overtaken by China or another contender, but that a rise in the power resources of many others – both states and non-state actors – will pose new obstacles to global governance. 

The application of power in international affairs has raised an endless debate among those who are in favor of the direct military use of power and those who are in support of diplomacy. This indirect use of power is what Joseph Ney calls soft power...

Smart power is needed to defeat terrorism. Smart power is the ability to combine hard military and police power and the soft power of attraction and persuasion.