Learning another language will open the door to another culture and enhance your career opportunities in the increasingly global economy...The new language deepens your capacity to communicate and to understand the challenges of all cross-cultural relations.

During the past three decades China has made great advances in public diplomacy and it is emerging as a vital tool for the country... But the financial crisis in Europe and the United States means there is a need for urgency in boosting China's public diplomacy.

Building bridges is not only work done by engineers. During the bilateral, multinational Natural Fire 11 exercise in Zanzibar, Tanzania, September 11-22, 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Alfonso Lenhart expressed the importance of religious leaders in Africa

"All public diplomacy is moving away from the idea of a single voice toward an emphasis on coalitions, especially cooperation with [nongovernmental organizations]," says Nicholas Cull, a fellow at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

The U.S. government is struggling to coordinate the volumes of information from the many agencies and departments that make up slices of the public diplomacy and strategic communications pie. Congress needs to use its oversight to evaluate the variety of agencies, set specific goals, and ensure that the vital work of public diplomacy moves forward.

The political gamble has paid off as Qatar, perhaps the richest country in the world, emerges as a player able to deploy more than the soft power of TV channel Al Jazeera, which has fanned most of the region’s revolutions.

PD is difficult because it’s not simply about the relationship between two countries; the content and prospects for PD activities are often about third countries. The need for messages to balance the requirements of different relationships makes them less persuasive....

In the slow-evolving world of diplomacy, it may be the biggest innovation since the wax seal: social media that lets Canadian diplomats go around the censors to speak directly to, and hear from, the citizens of the world’s rising superpower.