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.

China tried to woo India by playing old Bollywood songs and serving vegetarian food for President Pratibha Devisingh Patil during the state banquet hosted in her honour by her Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao here on Thursday.