IS has turned public executions into multifaceted tools of social control, recruitment and unconventional warfare, as well as performances of legitimacy and strength.

The president’s 2015 National Security Strategy, released Friday, promised Americans the administration will confront a myriad of security and social threats with a strong focus on diplomacy and an aversion to meddling too much in developing events.

In several recent interviews, President Obama has attempted to put the fight against radical Islamist terrorism in perspective. The president’s personal style is indeed often laconic, but in this case, it is out of place.

The brutal slaying of the two Japanese hostages by the Islamic State (Daesh) is a reminder, if one were needed, that the group remains impervious to universal condemnation of its methods, but also that Japan's ability to influence the group's actions is as limited as that of any other nation.

She carries the spirit of her son, a soft power presence in peaceful principles and humanistic values that Japan needs now. The mother of Kenji Goto, who painfully appeared before the press a week ago pleading for her son's life, was met with a throng of cameras on Sunday in Tokyo to make a statement about his death.

This week U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to India and Pakistan. Although there is little he can do to resolve long-standing tensions between these nuclear-armed neighbors, Kerry should take advantage of a recent development in Pakistan to reduce the near-term likelihood of war on the subcontinent.

If the measure of a country’s soft power is what people expect of their leaders, even in truancy Obama is demonstrating the advantage US leaders have over their undemocratic rivals—if only they can seize it. 

If 9/11 made global viewers of us, the massacre in Paris was the moment when online media was where readers gathered.