Co-author: Hailey Woldt

Let’s begin with the positive: the United States is present at the World Expo in Shanghai. The Secretary of State deserves praise for making this possible, by launching an eleventh hour fundraising drive, after the previous administration had done virtually nothing (besides rejecting a proposal that included Frank Gehry as architect). The Chinese cared enough about the U.S. presence to have contributed both public and private funds to guarantee that the U.S. showed up for Expo Shanghai 2010.

China’s new public diplomacy is ramping up to complement its traditional diplomacy. Chinese leaders are traversing the globe and receiving foreign leaders at home, but less noticed has been the blitz of China’s new soft-power efforts.

Today's world contains two declining global powers (Russia and the US) and two emerging ones (China and the EU). While China's rise is unstoppable, the EU must establish its own foreign policy doctrine, which in an interdependent world must be one of "inclusiveness" and soft power.

Over the past year, the Obama administration has been reaching out and listening to Muslim communities around the world, focusing on a “new beginning” based on mutual interest and respect that President Obama called for in his June 4, 2009, speech at Cairo University in Egypt.

Soft power was a prix fixe menu: If you like our movies and music, then you’ll love our Bill of Rights and elections. Knockoff power is à la carte: Millions of people in modernizing societies wear the veneer of an Americanized way today but beneath it are going deeper into their own culture and becoming more fully themselves — prouder, more confident, less eager to follow a far-off superpower’s lead.

Russia is seeking to recover its lost influence in the Middle East - and elsewhere. This time it's coming not with weapons, but with ballet and blinis, through a new federal agency

Audiences for daytime shows have shrunk in the United States since the 1980s, as the number of channels increased and more women entered the workforce...By relegating soap operas to daytime television and female audiences and resisting changes to a formula that worked during the 1950s and 1960s, the United States could inadvertently relinquish a hefty, if unintentional, tool in its soft-power arsenal.

The Obama administration's first National Security Strategy emphasizes a multilateral approach to solving international problems in contrast to the Bush years. But it is an adaptation of traditional thinking rather than a completely new approach.