Views of the US around the world have improved sharply over the past year, according to a BBC World Service poll. For the first time since the annual poll began in 2005, America's influence in the world is now seen as more positive than negative.

Perhaps more than anything, the involvement in Haiti shows the degree to which the military has embraced nation-building and stability operations — missions that require a degree of cooperation with nongovernmental organizations and civilian agencies that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Along the gradient of power, there's a possible mix of "soft" and "hard" varieties. The public diplomacy originating at the U.S. State Department is commonly associated with the "soft" power of peaceful persuasion and cultural appeal...

Along the gradient of power, there’s a possible mix of “soft” and “hard” varieties. The public diplomacy originating at the U.S. State Department is commonly associated with the “soft” power of peaceful persuasion and cultural appeal; the foreign information efforts at the Pentagon are often in the service of some tangible “hard” power goal. The mixing often takes place in conflict zones, where a variety of forces and actors are in play. So who decides the mix, and how?

Google versus China is a defining story of our time. Like lion confronting crocodile, the global soft power of the American internet company faces the territorial hard power of the Chinese state.

He says market research and surveys show that the Spanish language is Spain's best known product and the one for which the highest demand exists outside the country.

It was an American — Harvard dean Joseph Nye — who coined the term "soft power," but the Chinese have taken the concept to a whole new level. More recently, however, China has taken a different path, with its public persona seeming to become more shrill, even arrogant.