The fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago this month signaled the unmatched strength of U.S. economic and military power, but it also reflected the seductive charisma of American democracy and its open, pluralistic, prosperous society — or so Americans thought at the time.

Gary Hart has become the latest in a line of U.S. Senators and diplomats to wend their way to Northern Ireland to serve in the role of adviser, negotiator, and conscience-in-chief to the political process in Stormont. 

The United States and its partners are focusing their military might on stopping the spread of the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and on disrupting IS operations in Syria. Behind the scenes, however, efforts also are underway to prevent the violence from spreading back to Europe and the United States.  

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.