USC international relations expert studies the art and practice of negotiations.

Turkey’s EU Minister Volkan Bozkır has admitted failures in "correcting misperceptions" in European countries about Turkey, but vowed that the government would continue to strive to boost Turkey’s image and increase the amount of high-level visits to Brussels. 

Twenty-five years ago the Berlin Wall fell, and most Central European states went on to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU). Now that we are addressing urgent challenges in the Middle East, Ukraine, Africa, and Asia, shouldn’t U.S. public diplomacy efforts be transferred from Central Europe to these hotspots?

To make things worse, Europe’s self-proclaimed soft-power leadership—which some observers praise as complementing U.S. hard power in a supposed informal division of labor—has reached its limits. Europeans failed to foresee and contain trouble in their own backyards, East and South alike.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker recently returned from Ukraine and Turkey, and she heads next to Japan and South Korea. NPR's Scott Simon talks to her about practicing commercial diplomacy.

As the biennial Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit is to kick off here Thursday afternoon, closer Asia-Europe connectivity, practical cooperation and coordination on global issues are expected to garner world attention.

Over the next two days, Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with an array of European leaders, including his Ukrainian counterpart, in the most intense period of diplomacy between the Kremlin and Western capitals in months.