smart & soft power

President Obama on Wednesday warned Europeans against a rising tide of nationalist politics that appears to be sweeping the Western world. In a speech in Greece during his last foreign trip as president, Obama called for a rejection of the trend that last week helped sweep President-elect Donald Trump to power and has empowered archconservatives and isolationists across Europe.

On the cusp of a war in which millions lost their lives, borders shifted and modern warfare was revolutionized, Winston Churchill made an observation of Russia: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” For decades, Russia has fascinated historians, politicians and the public alike.

State-run broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) officially launched its first English-language channel TRT World late Tuesday. [...] Speaking at the gala, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wished success to the channel and said: "I believe TRT World will be Turkey's window to the world".

The number of international students at U.S. colleges and universities topped 1 million for the first time, paced by a surge of graduate students in sciences, engineering and math from India. China still sends the most students — 328,500 or nearly a third — but enrollments from India climbed 25 percent to almost 166,000 in 2015–2016.

American soft power - a facet of foreign relations that relies on attraction rather than coercion - has been severely damaged, and this will have a devastating effect on the role of the United States in the world. Even when their country was engaged in foreign misadventures such as the Iraq War, the American people remained widely admired for their freedom, imagination, and ingenuity. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to three Latin American countries will boost the comprehensive partnership of cooperation between China and Latin America [...] This is Xi's third visit to Latin America since he took office in 2013, hailing the flourishing momentum of the development of China-Latin America ties in past years.

November 11, 2016

One major casualty of Donald Trump’s victory in the bruising US presidential election is, without a doubt, America’s soft power around the world. It is a development that will be difficult – perhaps even impossible – to reverse, especially for Trump. [...] America’s domestic narrative soon overcame its foreign-policy setbacks, thanks partly to today’s unprecedented connectivity. 

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