With public diplomacy emerging as a crucial tool of statecraft, Park will have to shake off her out-of-touch image and engage peoples at home and abroad. Her vision for an “era of diplomacy by the people” includes broader opportunities for the Korean youth to take part in development programs, more overseas Korean language schools and support for cultural exports. She has also pledged to scale up official development assistance and house at least five more international organizations here.

‘The higher the budget often the lower the impact of e-diplomacy projects,’ was the first counter-intuitive insight by Ambassador Alexandre Fasel, Swiss Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva. Combining his rich experience from corporate and government sectors, he outlined a few e-diplomacy law/principles.

A couple of public diplomacy colleagues have asked me what we should think of the Pentagon memo issued earlier this month, the one that seems to say Strategic Communication is out. Over. Finished... Does this mean the end of MIST teams at embassies? No more military websites targeting foreign audiences? Is it the end of a fat foreign media analysis landing on your desk every morning? No more social and cultural adaptation training for troops deploying? Probably not.

In 1994, Bashar al-Assad was appointed chairman of the Syrian Computer Society. It was the only official title he would hold before landing the country’s top job, president, in 2000, but the appointment seemed to speak volumes about the direction in which his country was headed. This was six months into President Bill Clinton’s first term, in the same year that Tony Blair was elected as the leader of Britain’s Labour Party. Modernization was all the rage.

If you want to join the State Department's Foreign Service, you need a solid resume, plenty of time on your hands and the patience of Job. When I joined the Foreign Service back in 2002, Colin Powell spearheaded the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative, which aimed to increase and streamline the hiring process. Ten years later, the Foreign Service selection process for generalists is even longer and more byzantine than it was before.

The Congress party would do well to have lessons in public diplomacy for its senior ministers. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is a fit case to be the first student, and as encouragement Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi should also grant him a scholarship so that there are little chances of him dropping out.

The murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three colleagues in Benghazi highlights the dangers and hardships our Foreign Service personnel face every day as America’s first line of defense. Our nation’s diplomatic and development personnel are present overseas before the U.S. military is deployed, supports them if they are engaged in combat, and remains in place when the military returns to the United States.

Robert Banks, CPD Public Diplomat in Residence 2009-11, reviews CPD University Fellow Nicholas J. Cull's recently published book, The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001.