Azerbaijan's authorities have intensified their efforts to improve the country's image abroad, hiring PR companies and lobbyists around Europe to burnish its image. Lavish business meetings and events ostensibly dedicated to culture are meant to boost the country's image abroad...

Peter Frisch, a senior political analyst at the European External Action Service...recommended that the EU work with Arab nations to develop more solid tourism strategies, ensure that democratic leaders stay in power, use public diplomacy to talk to the people and reach out to them...

After decades of being banned by the Kremlin and decried for "distorting the human body", Henry Moore's abstracts, once called degenerate here, are now on display inside the very stronghold of power...We all know this exhibition is not just about art, but about diplomacy.

“There will be increasingly capable opposition forces. They will — from somewhere, somehow — find the means to defend themselves as well as begin offensive measures. And the pressure will build on countries like Russia and China because world opinion is not going to stand idly by.”

The United States and Europe used sanctions and public diplomacy to try to effect change in Burma. We cut off non-humanitarian funds, targeted the regime with stiff sanctions, and publicly challenged the junta on its human rights abuses.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been busy reassuring European allies that the U.S. was not drawing down its commitment. Panetta even went so far as to claim that Europe is the “security partner of choice for military operations and diplomacy around the world.”

Several years ago I organized a conference designed to encourage those involved in the work of cultural diplomacy – policy makers, practitioners and cultural producers, public diplomacy officers, and academics; who too seldom talk to one another – to generate a shared conversation about what in fact composes this enterprise.

The hallyu – or “Korean wave” as the phenomenon is known in Asia – is now spreading to Europe and the US, and spurring South Korea’s export earnings. Cultural exports are...giving the once reclusive country a global cachet for the first time, shaking off the war-torn images of the US comedy M*A*S*H.