global influence

President Donald Trump's vow to put "America first" includes a plan to drastically cut assistance to developing countries and merge the State Department with USAID, according to an internal budget document and sources. The administration's March budget proposal vowed to slash aid to developing countries by over one-third, but contained few details. [...] The document details how the Trump administration's plans to reduce direct foreign assistance would take place in fiscal year 2018.

Australia has been warned it's losing its global influence on the world stage due to lacklustre contributions to foreign aid and humanitarian efforts. "We kind of miss you. We miss Australia. Australia should be big influential, taking your space, helping with humanitarian (disasters)," former prime minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt told ABC's Q&A. Ms Thorning-Schmidt compared Australia's foreign aid contributions to those of the UK.

International education in Asia Pacific has been a critical diplomacy tool for the region – one that is becoming all the more essential given the tempestuous global political landscape and a move towards isolationism in a number of countries, educators said this week at the Asia Pacific Association for International Education conference. [...] stakeholders nonetheless observed that the region’s global competitiveness continues to increase.

In today’s increasingly uncertain world, powerful nations are more likely to use think tanks than military tanks to crush their enemies and shape policy. Thinks tanks are increasingly becoming what one author rightly called "masters of the universe". In geopolitical terms, policy institutes are indicators of soft power capacity of nations. [...] To be sure, the influence of think tanks in Africa is not new.

State-to-state relationships are not grounded in emotions, but based on shared interests. No one is a friend or a foe forever; the convergence or divergence of mutual interests decides the nature of the relationship between two countries. Though relations between Russia and Pakistan remained turbulent over the years, they have been warming up over the last decade, with top political and diplomatic meetings. 

As Russia’s foreign policy has become more assertive over the last few years, views of Russia in the West are becoming increasingly negative. But in Southeast Asia, a region whose history of relations with the USSR and Russia is fundamentally different from that of the West, perceptions of Russia today are markedly different. But can Russia make use of this positive image in its pursuit of soft power and influence?

When it comes to living in a democracy, Nato Thompson argues, nothing affects us more directly and more powerfully than culture. Culture suffuses the world we live in, from TV to music to advertising to sports. And all these things, Thompson writes in his new book, Culture as Weapon, “influence our emotions, our actions, and our very understanding of ourselves as citizens.”

Is public diplomacy still relevant? This is a question often asked nowadays. [...] In international relations, public diplomacy or people's diplomacy is considered to be a form of communication with foreign public that establishes a dialog designed to inform and influence. "Today's myriad of international journalism outlets makes it increasingly challenging for U.S. government public diplomacy programs to capture global attention,"

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