The government is trying to get yoga recognized throughout the world as India's cultural property. Since his election last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist and devout yoga practitioner, has persuaded the U.N. to announce an International Day of Yoga and has even appointed a minister of yoga in his cabinet. 

The administration may not be doing her any favors in embracing a national security approach ... that de-emphasizes America's military role, encourages the use of the tools of "soft power," such as diplomacy and social media, and plays up coalition-building over going it alone.

Three major countries that have been a thorn in the side of the United States are going to see diminishing influence over the coming years because of declining oil prices.

Power, in the globalised world of the 21st century, is clearly played out through trade relations – the rise of China, for example, or the success of Germany. The EU exists above all for prosperity and soft power, not the cry of war.

A few days after Syrian-American pianist and composer Malek Jandali performed his song, "Watani Ana" ("I Am My Homeland"), outside the White House, Syrian security forces burst into his parents’ home in Homs and beat them. “That was the first time ever realizing the ‘soft’ power of music,” Jandali said in New York, the week of his debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. 

As China's economic and political clout grows, so does the nation's role in the Middle East. The country has already overtaken the US as the largest oil importer. But can Beijing also bring stability to the region?

The brutal slaying of the two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State (Daesh) is a reminder, if one were needed, that the group remains impervious to universal condemnation of its methods, but also that Japan's ability to influence the group's actions is as limited as that of any other nation.