But the new relationship will give American diplomats greater leeway to reach out to dissidents. Instead of asking permission to travel around the island, diplomats simply have to notify the government of their travel plans. Not ideal, but then Cuba is not a free country. That’s the whole point of the new policy, to achieve by engagement — soft power, if you will — what hard power could not achieve during the Cold War and beyond.

Soft-power sound war escalates as Seoul and Pyongyang turn up the volume on propaganda transmitted over border.[...] South and North Korea have begun a high-volume propaganda war, blasting radio broadcasts across the demilitarised zone after a landmine explosion exacerbated tensions along the border between the two countries.

ASEAN members are focusing on important emerging issues in the region and have opted to approach them using soft diplomacy, with soccer as one of their tools. 

So in this background, no instrumentality like diplomacy, intelligence, perception management, media, use of soft power, influencing minds of the people, that have become new instruments of the statecraft.

To be sure, thanks to an extraordinarily active and well-funded foreign information campaign Russia has been able to undermine some of the West's narrative. But what it has demonstrated is that it is one thing to throw sand into the eyes and into the gears of the international system. It is quite another to actually accrue soft power, to get people to respect, like and want to support and emulate you.

It’s not an abstract question. The Obama administration’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba is banked on the belief that the United States can do more to encourage change on the island through a soft-power strategy of “engagement.” And a big part of that, in Cuba, means figuring out how to change the profile of U.S. diplomacy — and throw a good party again.

“China’s bilateral trade with Latin American will increase tremendously,” Zhang Shixue, a researcher on Latin America at the Chinese State Council–affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua. “This canal is very much in Latin America’s best interest and in China’s best interest. It’s a kind of win-win.”

This month’s concerts have been made possible thanks to organizer Morten Traavik, a trusted figure in the area of cultural exchange as far as Pyongyang is concerned. He told local news agency Yonhap that the band can draw on the division of their homeland Yugoslavia in understanding sentiment towards the separation of the Koreas at the close of Tokyo’s colonial rule.