On the face of it, the Browder vs. Russia match is uneven: One Man Against the Kremlin is almost a comic book title. In fact, it leveled out last December when the U.S. Congress, after heavy lobbying by Mr. Browder, adopted the so-called Magnitsky list, which imposes sanctions on 18 Russian officials alleged to have been complicit in the lawyer’s mistreatment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to China this week seeking more trade with the world’s second-biggest economy. While his hosts welcomed the overture, they were focused on the Middle East peace process.

The revival of Cambodia’s rich and unique cultural heritage has fueled the country’s impressive recovery from the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of 1975-79. This message rang unmistakably true as the Season of Cambodia (SOC) has dazzled New York audiences in museums, universities, galleries, and performing arts centers over the past month.

A perennial question about public diplomacy is, “Does it work?” Congress quite rightly asks that whenever budgets are being scrutinized, and public diplomacy practitioners do their best to provide definitive answers. This can be difficult because only a late harvest will discover all the fruit of public diplomacy. Student exchange programs, for example, may have greatest effect decades later, when the former students have become government officials.

I think Syria is a humanitarian disaster of increasingly enormous proportions -- there have been probably 100,000 killed or missing, 1.4 million pushed outside of Syria, notably in huge refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, and we probably have one million internally displaced. From a NATO perspective, our first concern is protecting the border of the alliance -- the Turkish border along the north of Syria. We deployed Patriot missiles there, and they are currently protecting millions of Turkish citizens.

The cyber war between China and the U.S. has spread from computers into the halls of diplomacy. In a report this week, the Pentagon said for the first time that the Chinese government and military have been launching cyber attacks against the U.S. Today, Chinese state media called the U.S "the real hacking empire" and said the country has "an extensive espionage network."

The two major powers' joint announcement that they would try to bring together representatives of President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebel forces fighting to oust him represents their first serious diplomatic initiative in nearly a year. After lengthy talks in Moscow on Tuesday, the United States and Russia said they would try to breathe life into a carefully negotiated agreement they both endorsed in June 2012 that left open the question of whether or not Assad must leave power.

A perennial question about public diplomacy is, “Does it work?” Congress quite rightly asks that whenever budgets are being scrutinized, and public diplomacy practitioners do their best to provide definitive answers.