After years of torture and imprisonment, Mohamed Nasheed was, at 41, democratically elected to the presidency of the Maldives. The critically acclaimed documentary "The Island President" (98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) tells that story. More centrally, it tells President Nasheed's heroic story of putting a human face on this low-lying island nation, which faces inundation through climate change.

The government and private sector don’t always get along. But Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s current counselor and chief of staff (and former deputy White House counsel for President Bill Clinton), believes that entrepreneurship and strategic investments from the private sector can do more than government assistance alone in transforming countries in need.

It is the summer of 2012 and America is debating whether to modernize a piece of 1948 legislation on U.S. public diplomacy called the Smith-Mundt Act. At a time when American officials are racing to keep pace with the new communication technologies and trying to “out-communicate” the terrorists, not just other nations, the whole debate is mind-boggling. Ultimately, the debate is about much more than the legislation and speaks volumes about America understanding of communication in a global era. To get up to speed, U.S. public diplomacy needs the U.S. public, and both need a U.S.

India faces a choice: be a cog in the wheel of the US’ Asia-Pacific strategy or be a wheel by itself with a dynamics of its own. The choice is going to be rather easy for the Indian policymakers to make.

Turkey’s “Arab Spring” forays into Middle Eastern diplomacy, have drawn much attention on the international stage. Its launch into Africa, however, has gone little noticed by a world more focused on China’s involvement in the sub-Saharan region.

More broadly, the assumption underlying most efforts at public diplomacy seems to be the belief that anti-Americanism around the world is a failure of marketing. If we just do a better job of selling what we do around the world ... then Pakistanis won't mind our launching drone strikes on their territory and will give us a free pass when we kill a bunch of border guards by accident.

The United States has cut funding to a popular Pakistani version of the children’s program “Sesame Street” amid allegations of fraud and abuse, a US official said Tuesday. The program, run under the umbrella of the US-based Sesame Workshop by a local theater group, had been awarded some $20 million in funds from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Poland and Ukraine have the opportunity this month to promote sport in its best light, and both countries hope that the trade-off in terms of new infrastructure and political and economic influence is what they bargained for when they bid five years ago to jointly hold Europe’s soccer championship...