When people think of social media and revolutions, I think the tendency is to think solely of activists organizing rallies on Twitter and Facebook (they do do that too.) But more important seems to be the way that social media and shared cell phone video footage help in building a shared consciousness.

A carrier of culture will not be popular worldwide if it is unpopular in its own country. For example...the Peking Opera does not enjoy much popularity among contemporary Chinese youth. China should make practical efforts to foster the people's interest in the Peking Opera, both at home and abroad, in hopes that someday this art form will be as popular in the West as the Western opera is in China.

Rather than focusing on meaningful strategy, Washington's policy elites appear to have spent the past decade obsessed with finding a winning narrative. Grand strategy should be about connecting ends and means on a global scale that transcends administrations and their peculiar obsessions and preoccupations, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, or China...In all cases, it still lacks a coherent vision grounded in a realistic grand strategy.

A particularly frustrating feature of the U.S. narrative, for Muslims, is that it divides Muslim society into a progressive liberal and secular sector on one hand and on the other a regressive Islamist sector that seeks to impose backward Islamic traditions. America then seeks to promote the liberal forces and to undermine the Islamist forces.

The work of Romanian cultural institutes will make the object of a distinct analysis. I believe in soft power, and Romania has a tremendous cultural vivacity which deserves to be properly publicised. I think that the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) under the leadership of Dr Patapievici is doing a great job in that sense, and we fully support its programmes.

It is in this context of winning Muslim hearts and minds that, 10 years after 9/11, Obama now has such a precious political window of opportunity to relaunch the campaign against terrorism. Seizing the moment would require the US giving higher priority, as it did during the Cold War, to public diplomacy, broadcasting, development assistance and exchange programs.

It will seem as if Ankara is trying to obtain a result it was not able to within the U.N. system by using its military power whereas up until today it was trying to expand its sphere of influence through its soft power.

Small contractors that focus on the civilian tools of national security, such as diplomacy and law enforcement rather than weapons development, have found a valuable niche in recent years, growing exponentially as the Pentagon deployed these skills in Iraq and Afghanistan.