That was, to say the least, a dubious stretch, but even in the American press Kim was called "a beguiling emissary" and a "self-aware pageant star" — the gold medallist in the international-diplomacy competition.
The Internet and a plethora of 24-hour television networks, including Al Jazeera, mean that any American public diplomacy now faces much competition.
In modern history's cardinal disaster, virulent nationalism combined with failed diplomacy and great power competition to ignite two catastrophic world wars within 25 years, in turn precipitating a nuclear arms race between America and the Soviet Union.
It was the year of "ping-pong diplomacy", featuring the table tennis competition in China between teams from each nation.
"Rejecting this treaty would inhibit our knowledge of Russian military capabilities, weaken our nonproliferation diplomacy worldwide and potentially reignite expensive arms competition that would further strain our national budget," Mr. Lugar said.
If there were a medal for diplomacy, Romney would already have been eliminated from the competition.
The competition coincided with a gala, "Women, Music and Diplomacy," organized in honor of Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Secretary State.
Thus, the competition will be won through "soft power," effective diplomacy and attractive social models (the liberal democracy of the United States and European Union versus China's mixed structures).
Lutton may be the youngest artistic director of a major performing arts company in Australia, but in addition to his impressive critical achievements, his reputation for diplomacy is legendary; interviewed, he won't tell me who his competition was.
Most of these recommendations clearly fall under the market and competition objective, although often dressed in the wording of science diplomacy.
With the changes in international relations since the end of the Cold War and with the growth of the role of knowledge in the economy and of the competition between firms and between nations, the concept of science diplomacy (conceived as the use of the soft powers of science to ease relations between countries) has lost much, but not all, of its meaning.
