Japan has lost ground to Korea and China in U.S. public perceptions. Here’s what it can do about it.

Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Scott Laderman gave a lecture last Thursday entitled “Surf Diplomacy in the Twilight of the Cold War” on how the activist culture of surfing developed globally in the Reagan era.

Public relations is one of many strategies that government can utilize to increase policy dialogue with citizens... But an effort must be made to maintain and promote the ethical practice of public relations to prevent public relations from becoming propaganda.

What is striking about today’s Russo-Ukrainian War is the extent to which the great powers — the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom — have sided with Ukraine.

The masked gunmen seen in Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk came only after the population had been conditioned, through propaganda and other soft power tools, to see Mr. Putin’s Russia as a saviour from the government under which they’d been living.

Harvard professor Joseph Nye, well known for his explorations of soft power, considers the American prospect in his newly published book, Is the American Century Over? His answer is a carefully constructed "No," which is based partly on the fact that there is no logical successor to convincingly claim dominance over the next century.

Many of the funds will be used for soft-power initiatives to cultivate “pro-Japan” foreigners, such as supporting Japan studies at universities and setting up “Japan House” centers to promote the “Japan Brand.”

Sister Cities International grew out of a White House conference on citizen diplomacy called by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.