2014 was replete with conflicts, crises and contingencies that forced the United Nations to face some of its most difficult challenges in recent history.

Russia appears striving to boost the demand for its language in North Korea, amid signs that the Cold War allies try to build up strong bilateral relations. Russia's Maritime Province of Siberia donated as many as 1,400 Russian books to North Korea, the Russian news agency Interfax said Wednesday. 

Obama clearly views Hollywood as an expression of American soft power, and its ability to shape the preference and perceptions of other nations.  As for the North Korean regime ... Hollywood movies, in their most surreal forms, constitute a direct assault on political fantasies, which underpin autocracies and their megalomaniac leaders.

Russia-watchers and Russians have spent much of the year debating what's behind Putin's adventurism in Ukraine, his meddling in eastern Europe's Baltic states, his support for anti-American dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, and the headaches he is generally causing Western leaders.

Targeting a Hollywood studio from behind computer terminals accomplishes more or less the same goal, instilling fear and insecurity at the heart of American exportable "soft power."

Most North Koreans (except those who defected) with whom this correspondent had conversed in Pyongyang and elsewhere appeared to sincerely believe what they read in their country’s media: The United States and its allies are looking for any opportunity to undermine their country’s socialistic system and thwart its attempts to advance, militarily and materialistically.

To those pulling out their tin foil hats and claiming that Sony managed to pull one over on the planet by manufacturing this whole scandal – just remember that the thing about soft power is that you can’t always control how it goes down.

The unfolding episode over the film The Interview underlines the potential for business decisions, whatever their motivation, to become intertwined with foreign relations among states and companies.