Huffington Post readers may be familiar with Arianna Huffington’s campaign to redefine success away from the two metrics of money and power toward a third which includes well-being, wisdom, and our ability to wonder and give back. The old, masculine signifiers of success lead to burnout, sleep deprivation and general grumpiness. Businesses should instead take care of their workforce, and indeed encourage their workers to take care of themselves. A healthy, happy, motivated workforce should be a symbol of success in its own right.

As a committed advocate for soft power and public diplomacy, I look for ways other than military force to address even the most pernicious international behavior. Usually, talking is better than fighting and wise use of political power can make unnecessary the reliance on “kinetic action,” as military thinkers refer to combat. But there are times when a state’s actions are so outrageous and have so little chance of being altered by peaceful means that soft power measures should be set aside. On occasion, blowing things up is essential.

It often seems the more well-known a concept becomes, the less it is understood. Such was the case with Francis Fukuyama’s End of History theory, which proclaimed—quite accurately thus far— that the end of the Cold War was also the end of the Hegelian dialectic struggles between opposing universalistic worldviews. With communism and fascism discredited that world was left with only one remaining self-proclaimed universal ideology, that of liberal democracy.

I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, and for me the star turn at this year's Edinburgh International Festival was the Beijing People's Art Theatre's production of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus." This was Chinese “soft power” at its best. The play was well chosen. Strangely, for a play written four hundred years ago when England was still an absolute monarchy, "Coriolanus" is a critique of democracy, set in ancient republican Rome, as England had never experienced such a thing.

From an armchair in Pakistan’s version of the Oval Office, Nawaz Sharif points towards the forested slopes of the Margalla Hills. “They are the foothills of the Himalayas,” says the man who reacquired the rights to this office — and to this view — when he returned for a third stint as prime minister in June. This comeback has given Mr Sharif arguably the toughest job in the world: governing a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people, beset by terrorism, economic crisis and a perilous confrontation with India.

It’s high time for the United States to cut off its $1.3 billion in aid to Egypt as the military regime cracks down violently on protesters, Sen. John McCain argued Sunday. The Arizona Republican added the U.S. has lost its credibility in the region after failing to follow its own law that requires suspending aid to states overtaken by a military coup–though the U.S. has not officially described the recent regime change in Egypt as a coup.