In this editorial, I build on my recent article (Ayhan, 2023) to explain three ideal types of power recipients' compliance with power wielders' desires: fear-, appetite-, and spirit-based compliance. Soft power is often conflated with fear- or appetite-based compliance, but it is actually present when power recipients comply voluntarily with power wielders while maintaining their sense of esteem and agency. Habit is the hardened effects of soft power. It comes into play when voluntary compliance becomes commonsense and habitual, although this compliance could initially rest on fear or appetite. I illustrate the ideal types with a case study of regional actors' motives for compliance with China-centric hierarchical order in historic East Asia.

Taiwan has been threatened by the People's Republic of China since the communists came to power in 1949. Although it has counted on military assistance from the United States to deter its more powerful neighbor, the United States has not signed a formal treaty pledging to defend the island. In fact, the relationship between the United States and Taiwan is by intention both ambiguous and complex. This paper explores the public diplomacy arguments and symbolic gestures that define this relationship and considers Taiwan's use of soft power given the size differential in the two entities' military forces and economies. The paper discusses the specific cases of the COVID pandemic, competition for cutting edge silicon chips, the war in Ukraine, and heightened tensions between the United States and China.

In this invited essay Nicholas J. Cull considers his career journey exploring the intersection of media and foreign policy, beginning with his first contact with ideas of propaganda and political communication. It continues with exposure to the historical study of propaganda and international relations at the University of Leeds, charting influences and key ideas. His thesis/first book research on Britain's attempt to draw the United States into World War Two before Pearl Harbor emphasized effective approaches to political communication other than the hard sell. Britain's wartime approach prefigured approaches of the United States Information Agency during the Cold War which became Cull's second major research project. Cull discusses the evolution of his work during the expansion of the public diplomacy field in the years following 9/11. Milestones include his articulation of a five-element description of public diplomacy with an emphasis on listening, and a more recent repositioning of Soft Power as Reputational Security, which goes beyond the usual emphasis on accentuating the positives of a nation's culture and values, to call for the active elimination of unattractive realities.