The United States will spend some $10 million on UXO efforts this year, part of a diplomatic offensive on a former enemy that includes health and education programs, a soft power campaign for a new Asian alliance to offset China's regional influence.

Previously held in Istanbul, Cairo, Baku, Baghdad and Tehran, the subject of this year’s forum is “Addressing Multi-Dimensional Security Challenges” and will focus on themes addressing security challenges; cooperation in defence, politics and economy; dialogue among Muslims to promote unity; as well as promoting a soft power image of Muslim countries as a whole.

Leading up to international Women’s Day - and launching the “European month of Gender Equality”, eight women leaders recounted their fight for democracy around the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

The masked gunmen seen in Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk came only after the population had been conditioned, through propaganda and other soft power tools, to see Mr. Putin’s Russia as a saviour from the government under which they’d been living.

The United States which has increasingly taken Latin America for granted is now challenged by China’s soft power diplomacy through hard cash loans.

To leverage more on Singapore's soft power assets, NMP Tan Tai Yong suggested expanding cultural exchange opportunities for youth to forge friendships abroad, while regional heritage bodies could work together to showcase the connectedness of the region before colonization.

Mr Nye, a veteran observer of global affairs, is more optimistic. He expects that America will still play the central role in the global balance of power in the 2040s. What, after all, is the alternative?

It was a state visit that for many sparked memories of another nearly 30 years ago, when William’s parents Charles and Diana, then Prince and Princess of Wales, came to the country for five days of pomp and pressing the flesh in 1986.