Can all the nifty new social-networking sites promote democracy and a better understanding of American values around the world? The potential is certainly there -- as was seen in the invaluable Twitter updates during the post-election protests in Iran. The U.S. government is embracing Web 2.0 for an ambitious strategy of reaching previously untapped populations around the world -- call it Public Diplomacy 2.0. While the potential progress is undeniable, so is the potential danger.

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Australia was accused of censorship Tuesday after it denied visas to North Korean artists invited to a rare international exhibition of their work, saying their studio is a propaganda tool of their country's communist government. The co-curator of the exhibition said the works were nonpolitical, and that letting them be displayed while banning their creators from entering the country so they could talk about them did not make sense.

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President Obama's speech at West Point...conveyed a new smart power view of security that "derives from our people [including] … Peace Corps volunteers who spread hope abroad, and from the men and women in uniform who are part of an unbroken line of sacrifice"...General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.)...pointedly noted that hard power alone cannot fight terrorism; economic and social factors of terrorist populations should be addressed.

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It is ten years since the U.S. government reorganized its public diplomacy effort, but we have yet, it seems to me, to arrive at a version of U.S. public diplomacy that is truly effective in both long-term relationship building and rapid transmission of political ideas. Instead, our relationship-building effort relies heavily on academic exchanges while our most noteworthy efforts at getting political information out quickly are taken up by the Pentagon, rather than the State Department.

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There is very little evidence that separatist, politically extreme Islam is growing rapidly in Switzerland. The Swiss, however, read newspapers and watch television. And in recent years separatist and politically extreme forms of Islam have emerged in every European country with a large Muslim population: Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Sweden.

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"Don't hold your breath" should be the catchall answer to Russians expecting any kind of economic and political modernization or reform under Putin's rule. Putin will return to the Kremlin in 2012 with the clear intention of maintaining — or even strengthening — his two greatest political "innovations": the vertical power structure and sovereign democracy. And the Russian people will continue to have no choice whatsoever in the matter.

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Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, were determined to succeed in Afghanistan with a light footprint. They justified limiting the number of U.S. troops by saying they wanted to avoid stirring up anti-American sentiment and creating a protracted insurgency. Unfortunately, in failing to get Bin Laden, we wound up with exactly what we had hoped to avoid in Afghanistan -- and a virulent insurgency across the border in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally.

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The Iranian regime has never found itself more vulnerable. And, with this vulnerability, it has never leaned more heavily on its own narrative of history. This narrative, of course, has a central antagonist, a character conjured as the "Great Satan"...It is worth revisiting this history, not simply because it debunks the Manichaean theory of the past touted by the mullahs, but also because it contains important lessons for how the United States can navigate the current crisis in Iran.

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