Soft power is more welcome in the world than hard power. In Afghanistan, Turkey is there with military power, but the Turkish military in Afghanistan acts more with soft power -- in the construction of mosques, schools, construction of roads, and that type of things.

The CSCC contains the germ of government-wide coordination in public diplomacy...If properly developed and meshed with the “hard power” tools of U.S. counterterrorism strategy, it could represent a clear advance in the battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims.

To the long list of public diplomacy efforts the U.S. State Department has launched in Afghanistan, add the TV show "Eagle Four," a "24"-style cop thriller that has proven, in early analyses, to be the most popular of several TV programs financed by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The shows are all meant to serve some public policy function.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Arabs opinion is, in my view, unduly harsh on a well-intentioned president. After all, the president is fulfilling his commitment to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and is certainly not meddling in the Middle East to prop up unpopular dictators...

Since 9/11, American views of Islam have grown more negative. However, views of Arab and Muslim people are moderately warm, and majorities continue to feel that the attacks of 9/11 do not represent mainstream thinking within Islam...

The Embassy's advice was that if the US wanted to encourage a New Zealand deployment then they would have to find public diplomacy opportunities to explain choices in Afghanistan to New Zealand media.

The power of cultural relations is in evoking rather than projecting values. We create openness and build trust. Ideologies which require violence and oppression to thrive are threatened by this work. The soft power of cultural relations is often most valuable in the hardest of locations.