Now Iran is demonstrating "sympathy" with the Arab Spring and mistakenly calls it as an Arab version of the Iranian "Islamic revival." While Iran calls on all Arabs to support the Islamic brotherly relations, it supported a coup in Bahrain and a web of espionage in Kuwait.

The war... diminished America’s soft power and credibility globally...One of the ways in which the US has left Iraq a better place is that it has nudged the country towards democracy...The major adverse effect of the US withdrawal could be renewed fighting among warring ethnic groups.

The "soft power", i.e., the power to lead by example, of the U.S. has reached an all-time low in Egypt. Female Presidential candidate Bothaina Kamel recently declined a nomination for the annual Women of Courage award at the State Department.

My career in anime cultural diplomacy started in 2007 when I was asked by the Foreign Ministry to give a lecture to diplomats prior to their overseas postings. The lecture covered the anime industry and its goals...One of the diplomats in attendance asked me to give the same lecture in Europe...

Sending pandas to Japan is a diplomatic way of boosting civil exchanges and building China's soft power said Feng Zhaokui...of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences...China gave a pair of pandas to Japan in 1972 to commemorate the normalization of bilateral relations.

The Turks are selling pasta to the Italians, educating Papua-New Guineans in their universities, building airports in Egypt...Turkey has not felt and acted like the confident global player it is today since the heyday of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century.

Many countries are trying every means possible to expand their cultural capacity. The United States, European Union member countries, Japan, Korea, and Singapore are all active players in the new-round competition in cultural soft power.

In recent years, the Chinese regime has proposed establishing soft power. But Beijing’s understanding of soft power is “money diplomacy plus grand overseas propaganda.” Actually, this kind of soft power can only be effective for a short period.