The question of soft power, when it comes to Iran, is contentious. Most analysts seem prepared to acknowledge that the Islamic Republic’s soft power in the Middle East rose significantly in the first several years of this decade.

US public diplomacy has morphed the Liu case out of the soft power human rights community into the hard power arena of economic warfare designed to pressure Beijing to devalue the Yuan and give Democrats badly needed credibility, votes and dollars in the run up to US midterm elections.

The Commonwealth Games has been an occasion for the capital to seduce visitors with the country's soft power. And in the process, Delhiites have joined the celebrations in large numbers, in stark contrast with the empty stadiums.

Imperial edicts in medieval China typically ended by exhorting lowly subjects to “tremble and obey”; from all available evidence, the edicts had just the desired effect.In the modern era, however, China’s muscular assertion of its recently acquired economic and political might to get the rest of the world to “tremble and obey” may have run its course and is beginning to face a global pushback.

Train a man and you will feed a mouth. Train a woman, and you will feed a family. This adage has found form in remote villages of Tamil Nadu, in the form of “relevant cinema”. A film is being taken by road through the interiors of the state where mainstream cinema is rarely accessible. Surprisingly, the plot of the movie is business management.

It’s the season for embassy soirees in the nation’s capital, and the public is invited to attend a series of concerts and receptions — not just for the music, but also as a way to sample the social whirl of the diplomatic set on a trip to Washington.

Violence is on the rise again in Colombia, especially in cities, even as the military continues its gains against the guerrilla insurgency. Murder rates in Medellín—while still a far cry from their 1990s peak—have tripled in the last three years, largely as the result of narcotrafficking.

Small and impoverished, Kyrgyzstan has seen two "colored" revolutions in five years, the 2005 Tulip Revolution and the events of April 2010. Now it is on the verge of a historic opportunity to create an island of democracy in a region where for two decades president-dictators have ruled with impunity.