"Our cause is to advance the Government's Economic Diplomacy", the Foreign Minister told the delegation when he formally received them yesterday at his Foreign Ministry office on Capitol Hill...In response, the Foreign Minister added that the Ministry's support to the initiative was not in isolation of the Government's action plan of actualizing its Economic Diplomacy.

Although coined by Joseph Nye, the practice of soft-power diplomacy is of course nothing new...However, it has never before served as the central tenant of American foreign policy strategy because previous administrations always recognized that soft-power diplomacy does not work in the absence of hard-power leverage.

The "Kung Fu Panda" movies, about a bumbling panda who becomes a martial arts hero, are hugely popular in China. They prompted debate about why a Hollywood studio was more successful than the country's own studios at creating a successful movie based on Chinese themes.

Today, the American Security Project released its report on the strategic necessity for strong American public diplomacy. The New Public Diplomacy Imperative examines many of the issues in contemporary public diplomacy, and recommends best practices for policy makers and public diplomacy practitioners.

“While this trip was monumental in itself with the partnerships that were developed, this year marks another special moment in the history of the Confucius Institute at WKU,” Martin said. “This year marks the official first full year of the summer camps provided by the Confucius Institute at WKU.”

Fundamentally, public diplomacy needs to be about more than explaining American policies to the world, explaining American ideals or telling foreigners about how the United States is a great country. It needs to demonstrate to foreign publics that their concerns, desires, aspirations and opinions are relevant to America.

While still evolving at incredible speed, the current use of social media is a dramatic step in the right direction that can help make the counterinsurgent successful at providing truthful information to the public before the insurgent can distort the perception of the event.

The mass and velocity of tweets, Facebook posts and even blog posts surrounding the Olympics have been extraordinarily high. But, if you analyze the content, you'll see that the high volume conversations are focused mostly on interesting stories.