At the heart of public diplomacy is a commitment on the part of nation-states to open up, reach out and engage people globally. People are the ultimate beneficiaries of all public diplomacy efforts being made by a few key countries.

Public Diplomacy -- according to the US State Department, "engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences" -- was coined in the mid-1960s by Dean Edmund Gullion of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy as a term meant to be more acceptable than propaganda.

If public diplomacy helps determine which countries are on the way up and which are on the way down, U.S. actions speak louder than the broadcasts themselves. "We are in an information war, and we are losing that war," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to Congress last month.

What do Israel and Syria have in common? Not much, but both have ministries of hasbara. No such thing exists in the West. No such thing exists in democracies. But in Israel, we have falafel and a minister of hasbara, who is known as the minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs.

What do Israel and Syria have in common? Not much, but both have ministries of hasbara. No such thing exists in the West. No such thing exists in democracies.

Synthetic ivy and orange blossoms climb walls adorned with paintings of stirring Korean landscapes, silk flowers fill the vases and the karaoke machine is pumping out the hits as the dinner crowd fills Pyongyang, an incongruous outpost of North Korean culture and cuisine in the capital's teeming streets.

Over a decade in the making, and with a $400 million price tag, it's a key piece of China's efforts to exert the "soft power" of culture on a grand international scale. The museum merges two prior institutions: the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of Chinese Revolution.

Israel grappled on Sunday with whether a retraction by a United Nations investigator regarding its actions in the Gaza war two years ago could be used to rehabilitate its tarnished international image or as preemptive defense in future military actions against armed groups.