An alliance of public and private partners supporting immunization and vaccination of children in poor countries – known as Gavi – raised $7.5 billion from governments and philanthropists at their pledging conference in Berlin on 27 January. What public diplomacy and communications strategies did they use to achieve this success?

In the past, the biggest problem was: How do we get information to these people who either have none, or few ways to access it? Now, as the BBC report notes, the main problem isn’t scarcity of information, it’s a scarcity of reliable information. 

As One Belt, One Road initiatives are based on China and other countries involved in the projects working closely together and sharing commercial and other benefits, Beijing needs to ensure friendly relations with its neighbors and regional powers.

U.S. lawmakers have renewed scrutiny of a nearly 30-year-old program that allows people from dozens of countries to travel to the U.S. without the bureaucratic hassle of obtaining a visa.

Nowhere is the contrast between Benedict XVI and Francis more tangible than in the degree to which the papacy seems to have recovered its diplomatic and geopolitical swagger. The normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba in December 2014 came about in part thanks to Francis, who wrote private letters to President Obama and Cuban president Raúl Castro that reportedly helped break the ice between the two leaders.

Since becoming president, Barack Obama has emphasized soft power, suggesting that an over-reliance on military force has alienated many of the United States’ friends and allies without achieving much in return. But many Republicans, and even some Democrats, accuse him of overcorrecting (...). For all their finger-pointing, both parties have, in reality, come to embrace an intermediary approach—what can best be called “energy power.”

Last week, a report from a committee of the House of Lords offered a brutal judgement on British and European policy toward Russia. Europe went “sleep-walking” into the crisis in Ukraine, said the report, and Western countries had lost the “robust analytical capability” to understand Russia. The truth about UK policy toward Russia, however, is much worse.

Europe will be "in deep trouble" if it continues to rely only on soft power, given the threats it now faces from the east and south, according to the Belgian commander of the five-nation Eurocorps headquarters.