At a time when disinformation and fake news corrupt communication channels, delivering the truthful and authentic American message is needed now more than ever. American public diplomacy, our nation’s outreach to peoples around the world, is the prime channel for communicating this message. It is essential to this country’s national security and should be vigorously championed by the president and Congress.

It is not every day that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets leaders of Arab countries publicly and with cameras capturing the moment. In fact, it has hardly ever happened in the eight years since Netanyahu became prime minister for the second time in 2009. And that is precisely why the 90-minute meeting in New York on Monday evening with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was so significant.

As Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan pointed out in his essay for the 2016 Soft Power 30 report, the concept of soft power is still relatively foreign to many diplomatic services in Latin America, but this is beginning to change. Several countries in the region have started developing their capabilities to tap into, systematize, and project soft power internationally. In conducting foreign policy, public diplomacy is a key instrument for countries to assert their views and leverage soft power assets.