Two bills aiming to increase the coordination and support for US science diplomacy in developing countries are unlikely to be passed by the US House of Representatives this summer, according to insiders. A "financial cliff" is looming at the start of 2013, "and there will be massive cuts of all government programmes", said Daly.

Fostering that kind of eye-opening cultural exchange was the point of the State Department's initial push of artists, academics and business leaders into nations undergoing transformations after the Arab Spring uprisings. And it's also what's at stake as the Obama administration issues travel warnings and yanks personnel from its besieged diplomatic missions across the Muslim world.

An exhibition entitled “Vietnamese Contemporary Art: The Colours of Vietnam” is now on show at the Washington Arts Club in the USA. The 30 paintings by seven artists depict Vietnam from its struggle for national independence to its current stage of development, offering the American audience a broad view of daily life in the country including family love, beautiful Vietnamese women in ao dai (traditional long dress) and changes in the capital city of Hanoi.

“At a time when the United States seems very much in need of public diplomacy in the Middle East, in cases such as these, scholars, the host countries and the American public are all losers,” said Maurice Pomerantz, a Fulbright scholar who’d planned to spend the year teaching comparative literature in Lebanon but was relocated to Jordan because of the State Department’s security concerns.

The use of social media for the purpose of public diplomacy has increasingly drawn the attention of U.S. diplomacy professionals, observers and political analysts especially after the recent attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya that were triggered by outrage over an anti-Islamic video released on Sept. 11.

Last week, before the world caught on fire over a film clip, I wrote about the paradox of value promotion in public diplomacy. No matter how appealing promoting one’s values may be, trying to do so in a global arena is fraught with difficulty. Yet, because values are integral to a nation’s communication, public diplomacy will inevitably reflect those values. What’s happening between the U.S.

In the long term, a battle over value promotion is a no-win scenario in today’s global communication arena. To be savvy, public diplomacy strategists need to find ways to give voice and bring the public into the public diplomacy equation.

The murder of U.S. diplomats in Libya as an alleged reaction to a YouTube posting brings into focus serious differences in culture and values with many societies in the Muslim world. Acknowledging this fact is an essential step in tackling the gaps in the value of human life and religious symbols.