Still the longest State Department sponsored tour in U.S. history, the groundbreaking odyssey was conducted at the height of the Cold War and was only the second cultural mission of its kind to take place during that tense political period.

In a clear act of public diplomacy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on BBC Persian this week to engage the network's Iranian audience on a range of issues regarding the state of relations between Iran and America.

In a clear act of public diplomacy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on BBC Persian this week to engage the network's Iranian audience on a range of issues regarding the state of relations between Iran and America. In an interview-format program, she tried to address some important issues raised by Iranians living either in Iran or outside the country.

The most innovative thing about the Department of State’s “Apps4Africa” public diplomacy project isn’t the immediate outcome—small cash prizes for the best mobile phone applications—but the process.

Such fanfare went beyond the service of prosecuting a single crime. More likely, the charges being leveled at Iran came in the service of “public diplomacy,” an attempt to establish a broad narrative that serves a policy decision. Pushing the narrative of the Iranian “boogeyman” is not unusual in U.S. policy circles.

“What we have seen in our exotic travels so far is that the Peace Corps is about the best use of soft power the US has ever made,” says Orth. The entire budget of the Peace Corps costs 5 hours in Iraq. Plus these Americans speak the language and are accepted and loved.”

Due to failures of civilian institutions, many soldiers have become de facto nation-builders, anthropologists, and public diplomats. They were not, in many cases, trained for these missions. But they were the only option—albeit an expensive and inefficient one.

Actor Jason Alexander of "Seinfeld" fame paid a call on Shimon Peres, the president of Israel. Alexander was visiting the Holy Land as part of a pro-peace delegation from a grassroots group called OneVoice, dedicated to finding a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.