A generation ago, many foreign policy professionals might have answered yes. Diplomacy, at least traditionally, has been an exercise conducted by diplomats in hushed antechambers with tall ceilings. To suggest that Prince von Metternich and his colleagues needed to win the hearts and minds of their people would have been met with incredulity. Now let's change the rules. However one assesses these developments, it is safe to say that any agreement reached inside Vienna's tall, hushed rooms would have been merely the first step in the task of remaking 19th-century Europe.
International affairs is no longer the preserve of nation- states and multinational organizations.
In an age characterized by the dispersal of power, globalization and the omnivorous consumption of information, public diplomacy has come into its own. Today, public diplomacy is neither an oxymoron nor an afterthought, but an integral component for successfully conducting U.S. foreign policy. The basic instruments of public diplomacy are hardly new. The United States, for example, has conducted educational and cultural exchange programs for almost 60 years. Cultural diplomacy is usually an exercise in deferred gratification, since such exchange programs typically don't offer immediate or obvious payoffs.