Attended by roughly 150 students and faculty and sponsored by the Yale Political Union, Murphy instead called for a “winning strategy” that puts more weight on non-military intervention and homeland security. 

Defectors have turned to floating soap operas - even Hollywood movies - into the North to stir up 'regime change'.

The results of yesterday's parliamentary election in Estonia would not be of interest to anyone outside the tiny nation, were they not a test of Russian President Vladimir Putin's soft power in the post-Soviet Baltic states.

For foreigners, it can be hard to understand the staggering viewership of CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. The yearly program commanded 700 million eyeballs in 2014 and 690 million eyeballs this year, according to CNN. But cold comments online suggest that CCTV’s viewership comes less from popularity than from a captive audience.

Japan and South Korea are building on a long interest in a country notable for its cheap labour and 90m-strong consumer market. From Hanoi’s point of view, there is a political imperative to draw more foreign investment because of structural economic problems such as bad debts and inefficient state companies, which have dragged Vietnam’s growth down from above 7 per cent a year before the western financial crisis to 5.4 per cent in 2013.

Last week, a report from a committee of the House of Lords offered a brutal judgement on British and European policy toward Russia. Europe went “sleep-walking” into the crisis in Ukraine, said the report, and Western countries had lost the “robust analytical capability” to understand Russia. The truth about UK policy toward Russia, however, is much worse.

Europe will be "in deep trouble" if it continues to rely only on soft power, given the threats it now faces from the east and south, according to the Belgian commander of the five-nation Eurocorps headquarters.