The current strain in U.S. relations with Russia sums up the challenges of dealing with authoritarian rulers...The time has come to formally review U.S. relations with authoritarian regimes around the globe and identify ways to support human rights and democracy activists while continuing cooperation on common security and economic interests... Senior U.S. officials and diplomats should conduct vigorous public diplomacy to communicate the values of freedom directly to people living under authoritarian rule.

...[previously] I posited that historical attitudes reaching back to the dawn of the Zionist movement provide a context, if not a continuous mode of thought, lying behind Israel’s inability and unwillingness to construct a public diplomacy program that directly engages newly empowered Arab publics.