Last week, before the world caught on fire over a film clip, I wrote about the paradox of value promotion in public diplomacy. No matter how appealing promoting one’s values may be, trying to do so in a global arena is fraught with difficulty. Yet, because values are integral to a nation’s communication, public diplomacy will inevitably reflect those values. What’s happening between the U.S.

In the long term, a battle over value promotion is a no-win scenario in today’s global communication arena. To be savvy, public diplomacy strategists need to find ways to give voice and bring the public into the public diplomacy equation.

After his unexplained two-week absence from the public eye, China's presumptive president-in-waiting looks to be undertaking a campaign to prove he's healthy and fit to lead, starting with a meeting this week with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

The Pew Research Center is out with a new poll on American reactions to last week’s attacks on the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Libya. Contrary to speculation that the attacks would hurt President Obama politically—speculation that likened Obama to Jimmy Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis–Pew’s results suggest that at least among people following the story—the attacks have done more to hurt Governor Romney.

The murder of U.S. diplomats in Libya as an alleged reaction to a YouTube posting brings into focus serious differences in culture and values with many societies in the Muslim world. Acknowledging this fact is an essential step in tackling the gaps in the value of human life and religious symbols.

The notorious tweet reaffirming a statement that condemned "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" has been deleted by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, but the incident raises a question that lingers: Is blasting out 140-character messages on Twitter a good way to conduct diplomacy, given the political, and even mortal, risks?

“The death of U.S. public diplomacy” was how one Twitter user last Tuesday described the now-infamous apology from the U.S. embassy in Cairo for the ill-conceived movie Innocence of Muslims. Strong words, but there is no doubt about it: The need for American public diplomacy in the Middle East needs to be rebooted and rethought. But how?