I wrote last week... "The U.S. military has been working hard to provide flood assistance, but most of that is invisible to Pakistanis," I noted. That seemed to me to be a missed opportunity -- and characteristic of a weird misfire in U.S. public diplomacy. For a superpower, we can be oddly shy about advertising our good works.

Decades ago, a few famous folk were lauded for their good works off-screen. Danny Kaye was UNICEF'S first celebrity spokesperson; Audrey Hepburn, after she retired from filmmaking, was also a UNICEF ambassador. Now it's more difficult to name a celebrity without a cause than to name the famous faces who advocate to end war, cure disease or solve impenetrable environmental and humanitarian crises.

You may have noticed that one of the post categories for this blog is “U.S. Aid” and posts under that category are devoted to news and commentary about U.S. efforts to provide financial and humanitarian assistance to other countries. I see this as one of the pillars of the traditional U.S. role in the world.

President Obama on Wednesday unveiled a policy directive that defines the pursuit of global development as a “core pillar of American power.” Under the directive, development and foreign assistance are for the first time elevated to the level of key factors in US national security and economic policy.

Is all that foreign aid flowing into Pakistan in the aftermath of last month’s massive floods changing the way Pakistanis feel about the West, and in particular the United States?

The global image of India as a poor country that receives large amounts of aid from rich nations is so well entrenched that it may come as a surprise to many, Indians among them, that the country is fast becoming a major donor.

A pro-Palestinian group says it will break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by flying a planeload of aid into the coastal strip. The U.S.-based Free Palestine Movement said on its website that it will “raise the ante and challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza by air.”

The aid package, worth about $8.5 million, is a fraction of the more than 300,000 tons of rice and other aid South Korea used to ship to the North annually until President Lee Myung-bak took office in early 2008. But it marked the first major aid shipment to the North since the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, was sunk.