“At a time when the United States seems very much in need of public diplomacy in the Middle East, in cases such as these, scholars, the host countries and the American public are all losers,” said Maurice Pomerantz, a Fulbright scholar who’d planned to spend the year teaching comparative literature in Lebanon but was relocated to Jordan because of the State Department’s security concerns.

Dozens of disappointing Pew polls later, with the United States government having earmarked vast sums of money for public diplomacy, you have to wonder whether Washington hasn’t run up a blind alley in its desire to be popular among Arabs. An obscure Israeli-American real estate developer in California uploads a video condemning the Prophet Mohammad, and mobs storm the American consulate in Benghazi, killing an ambassador.

American embassies across the globe have taken to Twitter over the last year or two, an impressive soft power outreach to citizens of foreign countries, but the Cairo feed has stood out. Other feeds, even when they tweet frequently, tend to take the staid tone of official diplomacy, tweeting press releases, quotes from U.S. officials, and relevant headlines.

The American embassy in Cairo’s response to Tuesday’s attacks in Egypt and Libya have raised new questions about the role of social media in diplomacy... “How do you govern in an era when Twitter is faster than the CIA?” said Philip Seib, author of the book “Real-Time Diplomacy: Politics and Power in the Social Media Era”.

The attraction of significant players in the Egyptian private economic sector such as the Arab Contractors and Engineering Consultants Group, both of which have now opened offices in Liberia. Others include the visit of the Egyptian Culture Troupe whose performances entertained Liberians and further solidified the cultural ties between the two countries.

"Egypt, the gift of the Nile” is a phrase coined by the Greek historian Herodotus 3,000 years ago in his book about Egypt. His description continues to be true today, as Egypt is the only place in the world where a river cuts across a thousand miles of desert, creating a civilization along with it.

The practice of public diplomacy has evolved over past decades towards countries such as Egypt. From cultural exchanges and international development efforts of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Jimmy Carter peace initiatives with the U.S. and other allies, the relations between the U.S. and Egypt have been defined by numerous public diplomacy initiatives. Likewise, the challenges the U.S. faces in engaging and “winning” audiences in the Middle East have also drastically changed, over the last ten years.

APDS Blogger: Lydia Marcos