The launch of a new report capturing youth perspectives on foreign affairs in Canberra says Australia needs a clear vision of global engagement. [...] Politicians and youth leaders assembled in Canberra on Tuesday to launch a report by advocacy network Oaktree outlining a vision for foreign policy. [...] Following consultation with various groups, the report found the global issues young people prioritized were climate change, migration and asylum seeker rights, overseas development assistance and equality.

Efforts to bring international students to U.S. campuses and send American students overseas has accelerated in the past five years, according to an American Council on Education (ACE) survey of U.S. colleges. International engagement was “high” or “very high,” ACE said of the more than 70 percent of 1,100 American colleges and universities it polled in 2016. Schools have stepped up efforts to “internationalize” campuses in the face of globalization, the report said, but “efforts are still focused first and foremost on the external[.]”

Two events last week suggested the conflicting currents in Iran. The country marked the anniversary of its revolution last Wednesday with the usual slogan, "Death to America." The following day, Iran opened an international tourism exhibition with a different slogan: "You are invited."

U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker isn't afraid to travel to hot spots. Recently returned from a mission that took her to Ukraine, Poland, and Turkey, she is ready to enter another volatile area if she thinks her style of "commercial diplomacy" can make a difference.

Hard-headed bean counters are busy auditing the economic gains of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan but the PM seems to have shrewdly used "soft power" symbolism to boost the profile of a visit billed as a major international engagement. 

China's president, Xi Jinping, has paid visits to Russia, South Korea and Mongolia since February this year, visits that have "hit pressure points" that "cut right to the chase," according to Duowei News, an overseas Chinese news outlet. Zhang Jiuhuan, vice chair of the China Public Diplomacy Association, compared Xi's recent official foreign visits to hitting pressure points, or points on the energy channels of the body — in other words, they were "short, fast, rich in content and fruitful." 

China is better off due to its extensive international engagement. Yet such engagement is double-edged, increasingly exposing China to regional unrest such as the current turbulence in Libya.