Over the years, the “public” at which U.S. public diplomacy was aimed was carefully limited to exclude the Islamist community. However, the events of 2011 have turned the Islamists who were once viewed as adversaries by American policymakers into the mainstream of Arab politics. It's high time U.S. public diplomacy caught up with this new reality.

The US state department, already established as a major provider of English language teaching support through its international public diplomacy strategy, is seeking to promote more aggressively US ELT skills and expertise to meet the growing global demand for language learning.

Sports diplomacy builds on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s vision of “smart power", which embraces the use of a full range of diplomatic tools, including sports, to bring people together to foster greater understanding. Since 2003, SportsUnited has brought almost 900 athletes from 58 countries to the U.S. to participate in Sport Visitor programs.

There is now a huge demand in the international community for China's views on global issues, said Wang, adding that online discussions between senior Chinese diplomats and the general public are an example of the country's drive for policy transparency.

Josh Rogin and others reported last month on the Secretary Clinton’s new Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Organized as a Federal Advisory Committee, it is reasonable to expect that all of the meetings will be closed door, which is unfortunate.

On the first day of 2012, Chinese President Hu Jintao published an essay on culture in a...The language, lifted from Hu's speech at a party plenum on "promoting culture" in October last year, has been interpreted as largely hostile toward the "west" and its machinations to divide China.

Today the entire public diplomacy budget is reportedly of the order of magnitude of what a medium-to-large Israeli corporation spends on promoting fast-food or snacks. If one does not invest in winning hearts and minds, it is no wonder that they are not won.