Japan is known to use cherry trees as a gesture of goodwill, and in Washington DC, one beneficiary of Tokyo's flower power diplomacy, the blossom season is an annual party highlight. But in Taiwan, it is more than that.

In the latest triumph of Japanese soft power in its former colony, tens of thousands of Taiwanese have taken up planting cherry trees to revel in their colourful bloom for a few precious moments each spring - just like in Japan.

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.