Beijing's scholars and foreign policy mandarins are experimenting on the "power/knowledge" model to win the hearts and minds of African thinkers and wielders of power in governments and regional groupings. [...] China's new power/knowledge approach to African affairs is part of its emerging African strategy. 

Two Chinese influential government-backed institutions have teamed up with an Indian media group to set up a multi-disciplined body in China to promote trade, research and people-to-people contacts. [...] This will be to collaborate in stimulating high-powered business activity, research and people-to-people contacts at decision-making levels in both private and public sectors, promote research in trade and culture as well as organize seminars and publish academic papers. 

But the “good old days” are long gone, and the volume and frequency of communication between a diplomat and her capital are the tip of the iceberg of the information revolution. Three fundamental changes to the nature of diplomacy stand out above the rest. The first and most important change is a shift in balance from government-to-government diplomacy to people-to-people diplomacy.

The Santa Clarita Sister Cities Program is a proud member of Sister Cities International (SCI), a nonprofit citizen diplomacy network creating and strengthening partnerships between U.S. and international communities in an effort to increase global cooperation at the municipal level, to promote cultural understanding and to stimulate economic development. Currently, the City of Santa Clarita has international Sister Cities in Tena, Ecuador and Sariaya, Philippines.

In 1956, near the end of this first term, Eisenhower convened a White House conference on citizen diplomacy.  Out of that grew Sister Cities International, a non-profit organization with the mission to “promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation – one individual, one community at a time.” [...] Durham joined the growing Sister Cities movement toward people-to-people diplomacy. 

Away from the xenophobic hysteria aimed at desperate immigrants are people taking steps to help newcomers and promote the good things they bring. [...] But on a local level, there are thousands of people across the continent who are braving the vitriol of their peers, and filling the void left by the politicians.

While culinary border crossing bestows pleasure on the plate, it also often spreads virtue. Globalization, the two-edged sword that disseminates Big Macs, makes widely available the “bright flavors from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia to Latin America,” wrote Greg Drescher of the Culinary Institute of America in a 2013 CNN Eatocracy blog post. 

These courageous individuals were among the only North Americans to travel to Iran during that period, and FOR’s commitment to people-to-people diplomacy has arguably laid a groundwork for the high-level diplomacy that has led to this week’s historic agreement.