Since such 'hard power' options are unavailable to them, small states are often left with 'soft power' as an only means of influencing their adversaries. Soft power comes in many flavors, including public diplomacy and propaganda, traditionally costly endeavors.

The YouTube video of Madam Ambassador's address at the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Geneva has gone viral on social media, leaving behind a nation cringing in embarrassment at the quality of its diplomatic representation in a key location in the world.

Almost half of the European guests, who visited Ukraine during EURO 2012 football championship, stated that Ukraine deserved to enter the EU in the near future. EU citizens were surveyed by GfK Company as a part of the Soft Power of Ukraine in the EU and Beyond project, commissioned by the Institute of World Policy, USA.

Aggregate data are not available, but figures from local language centres across the continent suggest that the number of people in Europe enlisted in taking the official Chinese Proficiency Test - or HSK - over the last two years has grown by close to a factor five.

It is an axiomatic fact of realpolitik that public diplomacy carries neither a presumption of truth and accuracy nor of completeness and objectivity. It behooves us never to forget that it is first and foremost an instrument of advocacy, a means to an end.

...the ceremony was an entertaining celebration of British culture.  London had a tough act to follow after Beijing’s stunning ceremony in 2008. Yet, not only did London surpass expectations, but its display of self-confidence and soft power made a more powerful statement than Beijing’s mighty effort.

Science has played an increasingly important — if at times ambiguous — role in sport. Some contributions, such as the development of performance-enhancing drugs, fall squarely into the negative category. Conversely, where adequate funds are made available for local capacity building both science and sport can make important contributions to international development.

In embassies and chancelleries the world over, ediplomacy seems to be the new rock & roll. Perhaps we have even reached the point, to bastardise Aneurin Bevan's classic quote about unilateral nuclear disarmament, where to deprive a foreign secretary or ambassador of a Twitter account is to send him naked into the conference chamber. Last week, DFAT finally lifted its ambassadorial tweeting embargo, signaling an end to a culture of online reticence that was starting to cop some flak.