The United States flew two Stealth bomber practice runs over South Korea on Thursday, in a second show of force to North Korea after a B52 bomber made a similar run earlier this week amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The United States is deliberately sparring with Al-Qaeda supporters and militants online aiming to shoot down extremist messages and win over hearts and minds, a US official said Wednesday. Seeking out the virtual spaces where "Al-Qaeda and its supporters lurk" is part of America's strategy to combat violent extremism, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Tara Sonenshine told students at the University of Maryland.

This past week the Washington Post ran a story about the troubles of Russian lawmaker Dimitri Gudkov, assailed by his government for having the temerity to visit the U.S. and address U.S.-Russian relations on Capitol Hill. As the short article explained Gudkov was in the U.S. to participate in a forum dedicated to “democracy and human rights,” organized by Freedom House, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and the Institute of Modern Russia...

The U.S. State Department is using a new kind of public diplomacy to counter extremism. And it's not what you'd expect. Trace Effects is an online game geared toward children and young teens far from U.S. shores. It takes the main character on a virtual adventure across the United States, from the Grand Canyon to New York City and beyond. But what is the State Department doing with a video game?

This past week the Washington Post ran a story about the troubles of Russian lawmaker Dimitri Gudkov, assailed by his government for having the temerity to visit the U.S. and address U.S.-Russian relations on Capitol Hill. As the short article explained Gudkov was in the U.S.

I want to take you inside the space that public diplomacy is uniquely positioned to address – not only in the short term, but in the mid and long term. And today, I want to talk about the ways public diplomacy augments and complements our efforts to counter violent extremism, how we measure its effectiveness, and why that’s so important to our national interests.

When he first came into office in 2009, President Obama had a clear foreign policy agenda. He wanted to restore the United States’ good reputation. After eight years of unilateralism under Bush, US soft power was at its weakest and the financial costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were doing serious damage to the longterm stability of the US economy. By not being Bush, Obama was able to mend relations with several historical US allies.

President Obama’s highly visible trip to the Middle East was seen as a timely and badly needed shot of public diplomacy in the world’s most volatile region. But what happens behind the scenes and out of public view now that the president is back in the United States may be even more critical to the decades-old American quest to forge stable peace between Israel and her neighbors.