Zalman first points out that the dichotomy “hard” vs. “soft” was an exercise in spurious academic categorization. The two are not categorical opposites: “the Obama Administration has dedicated itself to pursuing and promulgating the idea of “smart power”, which is meant to fuse both “hard” and “soft” power.

When the Arab Spring confronted the White House and State Department with the need to choose between embracing change and loyalty to the region's old guard the Obama administration chose change, albeit in the slowest and most cautious manner possible.

Obama’s public diplomacy on drones has its uses on the 2012 campaign trail, but for U.S national security policymakers it is needed to counter the daily reports out of Pakistan that virtually everybody from the pro-American foreign minister to the Islamist right opposes the drone war. In the country’s upcoming presidential election, perennial populist candidate Imran Khan is surging on the strength of his pledge to shoot down U.S. drones.

The Obama Administration stresses shared commonalities—diversity of populations, cultural vibrancy, innovative societies, and presumably similar political values. The Administration has placed strong emphasis on a potpourri of low-cost soft power initiatives, dialogues, and partnerships. It proposes to support these initiatives.

However, the fact that Israel’s president Shimon Peres now calls military action “more and more likely” suggests that, regardless of the eventual decision, Israel has embarked on a public diplomacy campaign intended to seize international attention.