While Iran's weapons and financial aid to the Taliban often make headlines, Tehran's soft power efforts in Afghanistan at the expense of U.S. interests are largely overlooked. According to Davood Moradian, former senior policy advisor at Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry, Iran spends $100 million a year in Afghanistan on funding media, religious and cultural organizations.

Telling them Australia is jolly friendly to Asia, close to it, wants to be a part of it, has a nice safe lifestyle -- that's not enough. We should be hard-nosed about the career advantages to be gained from our courses: they all get that. But as for the soft power stuff, we should try harder to stay with the big players in that league.

Australia and the US have previously expressed concern at China resorting to chequebook diplomacy but Carr appeared to soften Canberra's stance in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. He urged the region to learn to live with Beijing "developing all the accoutrements of a major power".

The strength of Taiwan's soft power lies in the country's ability to combine both these aspects, Lung said during a live interview on Voice of America (VOA), part of the itinerary of a two-week tour of the United States, her first visit to the U.S. since assuming the post in February.

Taiwan’s cultural power lies in its incorporation of features of Chinese tradition and modern Western society, ROC Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai said. Today’s Taiwan has moderated the authoritarian part of Chinese culture through maintenance of traditional gentleness and generosity, along with the assimilation of an open, law-abiding civil society.

Recent conflicts in North Africa have demonstrated Europe's capacity and willingness to project military power, and these build on a growing European tendency toward consolidation of hard power. The UK and France have put aside historical enmities to develop an ever-closer defense relationship, and over time this tendency will only increase.

Russia’s tactics, Grigas writes, take the form of oil sanctions, ‘gas isolation’ and dissuasion of Western firms from investing in Baltic energy projects. Business elites are co-opted through bribes, financial incentives and the ‘appeal’ of Russian business culture, which is network- rather than market-driven. More legitimately, Russian culture is also promoted vigorously.

The "zero problems" policy was founded upon two main premises: that trade and economic development would push long-festering ideological and security conflicts aside, and that Turkey's historical and cultural legacy is a soft-power asset, not a liability.