...politicians might reconsider their stance on meeting the Dalai Lama if he makes it to this part of the world again. A man who draws crowds of nearly 10,000 as well as extensive media coverage is hardly insignificant to political leaders...the Dalai Lama has immense “soft power that every western politician or president would die to have".

China has been very sensitive to concerns of potential destabilization in Asia from its rise. To assuage such concerns, China spoke of “a peaceful rise” and later “a peaceful development,” undertaking a soft-power approach. Yet the realists argue China will be more assertive on world issues.

Iranian Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Seyed Mohammad Hosseini underlined the significant role of mosques in strengthening the country against enemies' soft threats.

American intelligence analysts, like most U.S. observers, have often referred to the process unfolding in the Middle East as the “Arab Spring,” with its implicit message of democratic birth and freedom.

"We know nothing about the form of future tragedy," German playwright Botho Strauss once wrote. But that isn't true any longer. Now we can picture the form of our tragedy -- all we have to do is watch it on YouTube. The images of the London riots are a preview of our future.

The incidental influence that the United States exerts simply through people around the world observing its behavior is consistently underestimated, just as the influence the United States can exert intentionally by exercising its economic, military, or other instruments of hard power tends to be overestimated.

The Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs was established in May 2006. So far, this Division has reached out more to countries where the Indian diaspora is concentrated and has sought to attract them to come to India and study through the “Know India Program”.

“The Sunshine Policy had been the most effective tool that influenced North Korea. All the changes in North Korea we see now are the results of the Sunshine Policy, including marketization, consumerism and increased dependency on external input,”...