India wants to know: where has Michelle Obama been all day? This is unusual for the Harvard-trained lawyer who has made important international trips by herself to project American soft power.

Newspapers all over the world were unanimous in praising the legacy of reforms and peace-making efforts by the late King Abdullah. All noted his efforts at giving Saudi women a greater role in society by having better educational and professional opportunities, and highlighted the fact that he extended the right to vote to women.

Barack Obama will do something in India on Monday that an American president almost never does in public: He’ll sit in one place, in a foreign country, for hours.(...) The unusual appearance, also making him the only two-time U.S. presidential visitor to India, caps a remarkable turnaround in bilateral ties since the December 2013 arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York.

As long as the PM plays the security-political card while ignoring the country's real problems, he’s only helping his campaign – especially if he succeeds in bickering with the Obama administration. Meanwhile, a Likud-Habayit Hayehudi merger looks increasingly possible.

This past weekend, Sen. Patrick Leahy led a special congressional delegation to Cuba. It’s part of an effort to normalize relations between the two countries – relations that were severed in 1961 when Fidel Castro came to power. Leahy’s was the first congressional delegation visit since President Obama announced his intentions last month of ending the current restrictions between the United States and Cuba.

An interview with the man whose coinage 'smart power' is much in use in diplomatic-strategic circles. Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a leading US political scientist. He is also a former dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and worked in various capacities with several American presidents. Nye is a prolific writer and has written over 13 books and over 150 critically acclaimed articles in professional and policy journals. 
 

While Spaso House is not neglecting digital diplomacy under Ambassador Tefft, the online buzz generated by Ambassador McFaul in Russia certainly seems to have dissipated in a big way.

China is often portrayed as a giant in the hard-power leagues of the economy, technology and the military. But when it comes to the country's soft power, China watchers have little optimism. As some analysts have pointed out that soft power is all in the mind, think tanks are important as a deliverer of soft power as they convey ideas.