CAIRO --- I’ve spent the past week in Syria, Qatar, and Egypt, primarily to proselytize about public diplomacy. In Syria, in a Damascus University lecture (carried by Al Jazeera Live) and a lengthy interview on Syrian National Television, I made the case that Arab states do an exceptionally poor job of conducting public diplomacy and that their standing in the global political community suffers as a result.

I recently returned from the Middle East where I was part of a three week Arab & American Business Fellowship.

Twitter has had a phenomenological influence on the international news media in the post-Iranian elections period in June 2009 onwards. Through the continuous 24 hour- cycle of tweets, the micro-blogging site was challenging the censorship applied by the Iranian government on all news media covering the confrontations following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . After years of state monopoly and censorship twitter and other social media sites and applications are making governments more concerned over news.

This post was originally presented as a speech to the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei, Taiwan, on October 29, 2009, and is reproduced here with the permission of the author.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is spending a few days in Pakistan, ostensibly to build up trust.

Undersecretary of State Judith McHale's October 15 speech to the 2009 global Public Affairs Officers conference provides some useful insights into PAOs' concerns and Secretary McHale's thinking.

The U.S. and Europe both value multilateral action, “contrary to public perceptions,” but American and European governments have different motivations and goals.

That was the message from Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the United States, Claudia Fritsche, who delivered an address on truth and transparency at USC on Tuesday.