India needs to do more to leverage its formidable strengths in 'soft power' abroad and exploit its capacity to provide global leadership in the area art of culture, according to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

Egypt has revolutionized revolutions. As Harvard University Prof. Joseph Nye wrote in the Huffington Post recently.

Militarily stretched and economically strained. That's America, superpower with its hard power dented. But there's yet-unmatched American soft power, right? Democracy and Disneyland, Madonna and McDonald's, American ideals and American idols.

A fully funded foreign aid budget is essential to prevent the political instability and violent conflict that harms American security.

Egypt's revolution is momentous. In 18 days, a broad-based, nonviolent social movement overcame an entrenched, autocratic government. However, we are still in the first act of a long play.

Is the United States in decline? Many Americans think so, and they are not alone. A recent Pew poll showed that pluralities in 13 of 25 countries believe that China will replace the U.S. as the world's leading superpower.

With the release of the National Military Strategy on Tuesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, laid out the military's "joint" view of the future geostrategic environment. The NMS paints a picture that suggests the U.S. military is unprepared for a post-Afghanistan and Iraq world.

‘I am confident that the multi-continental breadth of the Geneva Consensus of May 27-28th 2009, the ‘soft power’ and ‘smart power’ it represented, the international legitimacy it confirmed, and the politico-diplomatic and strategic space for post-war Sri Lanka that it symbolised, remains safely intact and indeed ably enhanced in the hands of the professionals.’