2014 was a trailblazing year for Indian foreign policy, thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sustained emphasis on improving our major external relationships. Indians enter the New Year with a more involved and connected feeling towards the rest of the world because Mr Modi has been hyperactive in travelling abroad, hosting key global leaders at home, and winning hearts and minds on an international scale.

America is a meticulously constructed brand; it is the indispensable nation with exceptional power. There is no country as adept at branding as the United States.

Using its political stability, great economic wealth, and diplomatic ties with various local affiliates across the Middle East, Qatar developed a soft power strategy in several high-profile negotiations, from securing a key peace agreement in the Darfur conflict, to seeking political consensus in Lebanon, and mediating between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels.

Given its economic and political might, it would be foolish to predict the decline of the US. It has systematically been able to extend its dominant role.

Beijing appointed a senior propaganda official as its culture minister yesterday, making him one of the spearheads of the government's drive to project China's soft power abroad.

Russia appears striving to boost the demand for its language in North Korea, amid signs that the Cold War allies try to build up strong bilateral relations. Russia's Maritime Province of Siberia donated as many as 1,400 Russian books to North Korea, the Russian news agency Interfax said Wednesday. 

The visit ... would have taken the children to Arab towns in Israel, southern areas targeted by militants' rockets in the conflict, a mixed-race school and the beach in Tel Aviv.  But Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, said the cancellation was justified to protect children from "the politics of normalisation" with Israel.

Obama clearly views Hollywood as an expression of American soft power, and its ability to shape the preference and perceptions of other nations.  As for the North Korean regime ... Hollywood movies, in their most surreal forms, constitute a direct assault on political fantasies, which underpin autocracies and their megalomaniac leaders.