soft power
Americans may be surprised to learn that Chinese commenters are likewise skeptical toward CIs, which they view as bestowing lavish foreign aid on already privileged Western students -- even as many back home continue to lack the basics.
Xi’s Maoist vision for control over Chinese art is at odds with China’s quest to expand its cultural influence abroad.
Pope Francis is picking up where Pope Benedict left off, drawing the Holy See into the global search for solutions to religiously inspired terrorism
USC Annenberg's Center on Public Diplomacy (CPD) welcomes U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel on Wednesday, October 15, at 12:00 p.m., for a discussion entitled “Why We Need to Harden Our Soft Power.”
To put it simply, information warfare is a blend of psychological operations (“psyops”) and electronic warfare (“EW”). (...)Whatever the process, information warfare is an essential requirement for strategic projection of soft power, to achieve specific national agenda and objectives.
The most prominent strategy for how to counter an insurgency is “to win hearts and minds. Once the battle for popular opinion is won, they will provide the government with the information it needs to effectively prosecute these wars and the insurgency, starved of support, will wither away.

CPD Blogger Fahim Masoud on what China must do to maximize its power.
Fearing contagion, Jordan has announced that it will not tolerate any open activity, recruitment or support for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.