The Qatar crisis raises two issues in the field of international relations today. The first is to disprove the mainstream Cold War-era view that small states cannot play a significant role in global affairs. The second is that big powers always use hard means to take control of ambitious, small states in order to preserve the status quo.

In the not-too-distant past, museums and the arts were agents of hard power. Wards initially of royal courts and then nation states, museums were repositories of hard power—safeguarding the spoils of war and human conquest of nature.

From donating millions of dirhams to fighting hunger to personally delivering emergency aid to a cyclone-hit island, HRH Princess Haya bint Al Hussein’s charitable endeavors are many and often. [...] And now the royal is urging others to do their part – today in particular. September 5 marks the International Day of Charity, an occasion declared by the United Nations back in 2012 to help encourage fund-raising for worthy causes.

Beijing attracts most Chinese overseas student entrepreneurs, according to a report jointly released by Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based independent think tank, and China's recruitment website Zhaopin.com. "Soft power" including interpersonal connections, comfortable environment, cultural diversity, and resources are the most important reasons the returned entrepreneurs consider when deciding on base.

Just as many fans have been grudgingly coming to terms with football’s new reality, Qatar Sports Investments shelled out the £198m to transfer Neymar from Barcelona. This hardly came as a surprise. Neymar is a phenomenal talent. But it is important to understand what lies behind this: governments from across Asia have been targeting football for some time as a means of building their global soft power and boosting their images.