The Embassy's advice was that if the US wanted to encourage a New Zealand deployment then they would have to find public diplomacy opportunities to explain choices in Afghanistan to New Zealand media.

PD is difficult because it’s not simply about the relationship between two countries; the content and prospects for PD activities are often about third countries. The need for messages to balance the requirements of different relationships makes them less persuasive....

Aid organisations need to be careful that in boasting of (or inflating) achievements in Mogadishu, rather than highlighting massive humanitarian failings across Somalia, they do not become inadvertent allies in a grand deception.

Barack Obama has not faced the continuing revolutions in the Arab world with any passion...Yet change has come, and whether Mr Obama likes it or not this will alter Middle Eastern attitudes toward the United States.

Turkey’s attitude towards the Syrian crisis, as it has thus far unfolded, makes it clear that the years ahead will likely see a more liberal imprint on Turkish foreign policy. Not only Turkish rulers will give more attention to what Turkish public opinion think....

"Hallyu, into the future with the world." This is the theme for the 2011 Korea Nation Branding Convention, which aims to reinforce how the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, connects with the world and how to share a better vision for Korea's future.

For the first time the U.S. State Department has placed three international fellows in an LGBT organization as a part of a newly launched professional development program...Luis Melgarejo from Bolivia, Tovian Estella Nelson from Liberia, and Sam Muhumuza from Uganda....

Why is it that Obama has become the United States’ public diplomacy messenger at this critical time? The election of Barack Obama in November 2008 had marked a change in perceptions of U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East, as it came to be defined by the persona of Obama himself.