As 2012 draws to a close and turmoil brews across the Middle East and elsewhere, there's no doubt that we are a long way from the golden age of cultural diplomacy. Gone are the days when the U.S. State Department sent the likes of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington jetting around the world to expose hundreds of thousands to America's great homegrown art forms.

Regimes like Putin's can't survive on repression alone. To be stable and successful, they also need, for lack of a better term, soft power -- the ability to win not just the public's obedience, but also its consent; to rule not just through fear, but also through inspiration. During Putin's first stint as president, from 2000-2008, the Kremlin excelled at this. It doesn't anymore.

In a recent poll conducted in Georgia by the National Democratic Institute, 68 percent of respondents expressed their approval of a Georgian pledge to reestablish their country’s railway link with Russia via the breakaway region of Abkhazia1.

When Vladimir Putin took office as President for the third time, he sent the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a document outlining the philosophy that would guide his approach to international relations for the next five years. Only recently released, the document is very revealing, showing that Putin’s worldview, and his idea about Russia’s role in that world, has changed substantially since he first took office as president in 2000.

The National Hockey League (NHL) lockout has put a damper on the winter of most hockey fans. However, it ended up turning out pretty well for Ben Newman. The Little Falls senior met several locked-out NHL stars, visited historic landmarks and met with top-level government officials recently, all part of a sports diplomacy trip to Russia with a group from USA hockey, Oct. 4-14.

Senior Chinese and Russian officials on Wednesday agreed here to work together and take effective measures to push forward people-to-people and cultural exchange programs between the two countries.

Nowadays, the news about Russian-Iranian arms deals and fueling the Bushehr nuclear power plant might overshadow the less spectacular information about cultural activities, but they are happening, nevertheless.