For those wanting to use soft power in foreign policy, social media offer intriguing ways to deliver messages to publics that may have been inaccessible in the past. International organizations such as NATO continue to assess ways that they can enhance their missions by relying at least in part on soft power...

APDS Blogger: Molly Krasnodebska

Throughout the last decade, no message was promoted stronger in the European Union than the idea of a new Europe, which has overcome its past of war and totalitarianism, and has emerged as a normative power standing for international cooperation, democracy, and human rights.

And yet when it comes to the recent events in Ukraine, discussed below, European soft power appears rather meager.

In this context, 2012 will probably be a very important year for the U.S. and Turkey, because they have both been selected by NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division to implementing all of the organization’s capability for public policy.

We have seen citizens empowered to use their voice, many for the first time ever. We have witnessed several countries fall to the "soft power" of people organizing, and then acting on the organization to effect change of a type we have never seen in our collective human history.

Not much imagination is required to appreciate the impact in Indonesia of Barack Obama‘s recent visit.  There he was, using phrases of the Indonesian language not like some stumbling tourist but rather as one who has real roots in the nation.  His reminiscences of his boyhood exploits stirred the spirits of this rising Pacific power that can claim the President of the United States as one of its o

In the region, the step from energy to the vital issue of peace and security is not far. Also, Turkey’s “soft power” as a forerunner of democratization, free trade and a liberalized economy in the Arab Spring, makes its role indispensible.