If Trump became president, “it would at the very least create confusion and carries the risk of triggering a major turning point for the Japan-US alliance and Japan’s overall diplomacy”, Maeshima said.

The application of power in international affairs has raised an endless debate among those who are in favor of the direct military use of power and those who are in support of diplomacy. This indirect use of power is what Joseph Ney calls soft power...

Brexit is in many ways just the British manifestation of the broader problem that the EU has never solved: There is a common European institution, but not a common European identity. [...] Obsessed with its own internal problems, it will fail to take the lead in standing up to Russia, it will fail to contribute to security in Africa or the Middle East...

When he became pope, there was some concern that Francis lacked experience with the wider world. He had traveled little outside of his native Argentina, his pastoral experience was rooted in a metropolis, Buenos Aires, and its shantytowns, addressing problems of everyday life — poverty, migration and human trafficking. No one expected him to become a global player. But Francis is also the first Jesuit pope. Over the centuries his religious order often waged its own diplomacy, acquiring extensive knowledge of other cultures. The training shows.

As new challenges such as the critical need for a universal sustainable development agenda confront mankind, science and diplomacy are converging as common tools for trouble-shooting. A new phenomenon is Science Diplomacy involving the role of science in diplomacy.

Kuwait is one of the masters of soft power in the Middle East. As I was having dinner with two Emiratis, two non- Kuwaiti Arabs were having dinner at a table beside ours; the two non-Kuwaiti Arabs were stuck to one phone watching the second episode of “Swar Shuaib,” Kuwait’s Shuaib Rashed’s popular talk show. 

The United States has always believed that our best ambassadors are the American people themselves [...] It’s people-to-people diplomacy; nothing may epitomize its modern manifestation more than the way Airbnb has succeeded in connecting tourists with hosts on the island.