Dropping bombs isn't the only way to advance American interests abroad. (...) Certainly, the Islamic State poses an enormous threat to regional stability. But is the focus on military efforts the right one?

The Philippine diplomatic mission has taken "a giant leap" in its efforts to reach out to the Filipino diaspora with the launch of the mobile app version of Radyo Tambuli — the embassy's virtual radio platform in Washington, D.C.

Sohn Jie-Ae, dubbed one of the most powerful women in Asian media until her March exit from the network, spent an hour providing anecdote-filled, firsthand insight into Korea’s booming pop culture for a discussion titled “K-pop Mania: South Korea’s Place Under the Sun.” The event was organized by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and co-sponsored by USC East Asian Studies Center and the Korean Studies Institute

This week the world of public diplomacy got a set of readings of similar significance.  They mean trouble for the USA.  The seismograph in the story is the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index.

In the past four decades, since the disastrous events of the Stonewall Inn in 1969, the United States has undergone rigorous legal transformations to eliminate various discriminatory laws against its LBGT community.

The nation now most prone to such diplomatic pirouettes is the United States, still the world’s greatest power. Its strength has ever been defined, in important part, as idealism, “soft” power: belief in pluralism in politics, in free speech and a free press. These institutions are held to self-evidently good for a society: and the United States, with the European allies, has long preferred and rewarded those states which promise to follow that path.