In a sense, the surprise question in such a situation, and perhaps into the future, is whether France has stolen a march over the United States, perhaps in terms of public diplomacy, in trying to pull Japan out of its civil nuclear emergency.

On January 11, at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s annual new year press conference with the foreign media in Jerusalem, Oren Helman was introduced to the foreign press corps as the Government Press Office’s new head, taking over from Danny Seaman, who had a rather torrid 10-year relationship with the foreign press.

Indian bureaucracy needs to take some lessons on public diplomacy from their Western counterparts, and the same is the case with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Office. With corruption becoming a key rallying point, the extra-sensitive PMO mandarins ensured that the electronic media was booted out of the onboard media from the PM's recent trip to China

Joseph Nye is as gifted at branding as he is at thinking, teaching, and serving the public. He turned "soft power" (essential to "smart power") into a golden brand. In Washington, you know something has reached gold when the secretary of state wraps a "strategy" around it...

Can a poor country be a great power? Three examples from recent history suggest it can. These parallels would have weighed on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's mind as he flew to the southern resort city of Sanya in China's Hainan province for the BRICS (a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit.

The United States administration has rebranded the country's foreign policy around the grand concept of "smart power", an expression which envelops great confidence if not self-satisfaction, and which, to a certain extent, presupposes a strategic dominance.

According to the Washington Post’s analysis of the deal on spending cuts agreed to between President Obama and Congress, one of the hardest-hit areas will be the State Department. In particular, the cuts will come down on foreign aid programs, including the Peace Corps, educational exchanges, and economic assistance programs designed to help fragile governments in the developing world.

[Ambassador J Adam] Ereli was deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Qatar from 2000 to 2003 and at the beginning of the press roundtable he said: “When I left Doha in 2003 there were few publications, so it’s nice to see how much is happening in Qatar”.