"Once one starts listing the examples of Japanese culture infiltrating the United States, it's pretty hard to stop," wrote Entrepreneur.com's Laura Tiffany in 2008... Of the ten bestselling graphic novels in US bookstores in November that year, six were Japanese...

I also incorporated many PD resources as part of my own hope that some day we will have a cross-disciplinary approach and public diplomacy element as a core part of every MBA program. Through this process, I distilled out several resources and schools of thought that MPD and MBA students alike (as well as public diplomacy practitioners) can benefit from.

The dramatic expansion of Turkey's influence is more than just the product of a hyper-active foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu... Turkey is doing what the European Union stopped doing when it ran into trouble over its expansion. It is using its soft power effectively.

As the history of past U.S. efforts to use technology to bring progress to other nations reveals, the United States should focus its current digital diplomacy efforts on small wins, not transformative victories.

The US government strategy for improving its struggling reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan relies heavily on spending more money. More on bigger and quicker projects, more on aid workers, and more on monitors – a "civilian surge" to win hearts and minds.

One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of history and cost-effectiveness, we are hugely overinvested in military tools and underinvested in education and diplomacy.

It is vital to rekindle the new spirit that accompanied Obama's speech and to discuss together how we can transform it into practical programmes that bridge the concept of dialogue with real and effective partnership between East and West.