While HBO’S aim is to broaden its audience’s knowledge of India, the films, all of which were made by foreigners, threaten to open a long-festering wound in India. The outside world’s depiction of the country is seldom appreciated, or embraced, by Indians.

The United States continues to lead the world in global image, according to GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, a division of GfK Custom Research North America, and leading policy advisor Simon Anholt.

A striking achievement in sports diplomacy had also been the final relocation of the headquarters of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) from Yaounde in Cameroun to Abuja.

"Hallyu, into the future with the world." This is the theme for the 2011 Korea Nation Branding Convention, which aims to reinforce how the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, connects with the world and how to share a better vision for Korea's future.

Some may continue to point to the structural advantages enjoyed by the United States...of its rare combination of hard and soft power; of the fact that it remains the only serious power with true global reach... But in the current climate such facts appear to be cutting little ice with those who now insist that as result of Bush's ill-conceived war on terror, followed by the financial crisis, American decline is now a foregone conclusion.

When Gabriela Shalev arrived at the United Nations in 2008 as Israel's first female ambassador, she was determined to launch a diplomatic offensive to improve her country's international standing. Now Shalev, who stepped down in October ...warns that Israel's image is about to take another hit with a Palestinian initiative to win statehood recognition from the U.N. next month.

The American image now faces several new and worrisome challenges: doubts about its superpower status, a decline in favorability among some of the closest allies, and giving more and more consideration to the People’s Republic of China as superpower.

Americans' confident belief in the uniqueness, yes the exceptionalism, of their country, rested on an essential faith in liberty, and individualism and anti-statism at home, and in the power of our example, and muscle now and then, in foreign lands. Mr. Obama is ill-at-ease with that worldview. Our country has had pessimism on offer and has invariably rejected it.