Mexico's nominee to be its next ambassador to the United States said Thursday that the two countries' relationship is at a “critical” juncture with the new administration of President Donald Trump. Ahead of high-level talks scheduled for next week in Mexico City, ambassador-in-waiting Geronimo Gutierrez Fernandez said Mexico must pursue a good relationship with Washington but that should not come “at all costs nor under just any conditions,” or in a way that is “to the detriment of national interest.”

Much work was concluded in Beijing of late by Singapore ministers and their Chinese counterparts, related to the bilateral government-to-government projects in Suzhou, Tianjin and Chongqing. [...] Yet for all that, there is an abiding sense of realism that even old ties are subject to the vicissitudes of geopolitical changes. That was borne out in past months when diplomatic friction surfaced between the two countries.

Bad guys can possess soft power. I know—I wrote a book about it. But over most of the past century the U.S., as the soft power hyperpuissance, has largely set the standards of what constitutes effective national image projection. The United States has drawn its soft power, the “ability to shape the preferences of others,” as put by Joseph S. Nye, who devised the term. 

Now a new initiative called Republic TV, bankrolled by the nationalistic Indian politician and media baron Rajeev Chandrasekhar, stands the best chance to break the inertia and enter the big league in the world news business. [...] Should Republic TV deliver the goods, soft-power benefits will flow to India as an open and argumentative society bringing its distinct non-Western narrative to illuminate the world’s problems and offer solutions.

Core to Donald Trump’s appeal, both at home and abroad, is that he doesn’t seem to care how he’s supposed to behave. He certainly doesn’t fuss over offending Chinese nationalist sensibilities. This perhaps explains, in part, his curious adventure in China-Taiwan diplomacy. [...] And now he’s walking back his moves on Taiwan: On his first phone call with President Xi Jinping, Trump said he would honor the One China policy.

At other times, forged documents and fabricated news items consistent with Russia's strategic objectives have first appeared in obscure Swedish media outlets, which were picked up subsequently by Sputnik and "other sources of Russian public diplomacy" and broadcast to an international audience.

What can cities do to create their own foreign policy? The first article laid out four steps a foreign ministry might take to help cities engage on global challenges: supporting city-based networks, helping to deploy civic technology, working with counterpart ministries abroad to encourage vertical policy integration, and convening the global community to build momentum behind significant and widespread municipal challenges