As a committed advocate for soft power and public diplomacy, I look for ways other than military force to address even the most pernicious international behavior. Usually, talking is better than fighting and wise use of political power can make unnecessary the reliance on “kinetic action,” as military thinkers refer to combat. But there are times when a state’s actions are so outrageous and have so little chance of being altered by peaceful means that soft power measures should be set aside. On occasion, blowing things up is essential.

In the heat of a Cairo summer, the battle lines have been drawn. In the tense standoff, Abdelazim Fahmy, better known as Zizo Abdo, finds no room on the street for revolutionaries like himself. I met with Zizo at a downtown Cairo café called Hikayitna—Arabic for “our stories.” We’re a stone’s throw away from Tahrir Square, which has been cordoned off by the military with barbed wire, tanks, and armored personnel carriers. Soldiers man checkpoints into the square, searching bags and requesting identification.

Syria warned the United States against any military action over a suspected chemical weapons attack in its civil war, saying it would "create a ball of fire that will inflame the Middle East". President Bashar al-Assad's closest ally Iran also said Washington should not cross the "red line" on Syria, where doctors accused his forces of a poison gas attack that killed hundreds last week.

Sitting on a street corner about 60 feet from the Salam Mosque in the Al-Mina district of Tripoli, 21-year-old Yasser looked sorrowfully into the distance. His head and left hand were wrapped in bandages. A line of dried blood snaked its way down from his temple to his chin. Fragments of glass and small chunks of concrete covered the concrete around him next to a pile of tomatoes rotting under the summer sun. Further up the road surrounding a crater, about ten-feet in diameter and six-feet in depth, the carcasses of burnt out cars lay at unnatural angles across the tarmac.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has refuted allegations that the Endless Possibilities tagline adopted by Malaysia was copied from Israel. According to PMO, the Government unveiled its latest branding concept four months before Israel announced the same theme as part of its tourism promotion. “Malaysia’s Endless Possibilities nation branding concept was unveiled in January 2013 at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar fell out because they supported conflicting interests primarily in Egypt. Elsewhere too - Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Gaza (Hamas). But their coming together in any case was for limited tactical reasons: to stall the Arab Spring. The big asset the Qataris brought to the union, hurriedly put together, was the incomparable credibility of their TV channel, Al Jazeera. Qatar launched Al Jazeera, initially only in Arabic. Later, superior retirees from the BBC like Sir David Frost were enlisted to launch its English service.

In June, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rouhani ran as a reform candidate, and many have interpreted his victory as a harbinger of a possible liberalization or rationalization of Iranian domestic and foreign policy. But the dominant figure in Iranian politics is not the president but rather the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Last week Tunisia seemed to be heading for the whirlpool that has sucked Egypt down. The secular opposition had taken to the streets to demand that the Islamist government resign. The National Constituent Assembly, charged with writing a constitution, had been shut down. The state was paralyzed. This week, all the warring parties are talking to each other. The spirit of compromise could evaporate, but my impression, from talking to people on all sides over the last few days, is that Tunisia has a decent chance of avoiding catastrophe. Why is that?