Morocco and Indonesia have enjoyed cordial relations for more than five decades. There is no need for a visa if an Indonesian citizen wants to visit the North African nation. Yet a lack of awareness about the economic potential of both countries remained a hurdle in boosting bilateral ties, Morocco’s man in Jakarta has said.

At the beginning of 2012, we went to Buenos Airesto work with the communications teams across Latin America. We talked about lots of things, including the Falklands, but what really came out of it for me was a gem of an idea about using the GREAT campaign and our soft power to reach out to a new generation in Cuba.

No doubt you've seen the news about the Takeshima and Senkaku disputes: Japan is sparring with China, South Korea and Taiwan over some specks in the ocean. Why is this happening?

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan trumpeted Turkey's credentials as a rising democratic power on Sunday, saying his Islamist-rooted ruling party had become an example to the Muslim world after a decade in charge.

It is not an exaggeration when people say it is unlikely to know Americans and not fall in love them – a feeling I share passionately as a first generation immigrant. Americans are kind, generous, and tolerant and genuinely believe in those empowering universal values of personal liberty and individual responsibility.

The response to that Toyota in Tianjin and the Apple iPhone5 could not be more different. What links them, however, are the notion of "soft power" and the risks and rewards of being identified as one of a given nation's leading companies...

The stunning success of the video and the song has turned assumptions about nation branding and images of Korean upside down... "Gangnam Style" was an unexpected hit, not a promoted one...This says volumes about efforts to promote Korean cultural products overseas: What Koreans like is not necessarily what foreigners like.

Chinese nationalists have for over a week now staged nationwide demonstrations against Japan which turned violent in some cities. The two countries are locked in a decades-old conflict over the ownership of a group of islets in the East China Sea, called in Chinese Diaoyu and Japanese Senkaku.