As Barack Obama works to shape his new foreign policy team and its guiding principles, he ought to avoid the trap of treating American popularity abroad as an end in itself. Indeed, too slavish a pursuit of popularity for its own sake might actually get in the way of achieving far worthier, broader objectives.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center (a conservative think tank) held a forum last week on the subject of “public diplomacy,” which is how a country’s government communicates not with other governments, but with the citizenry in other nations. Far from mere “propaganda,” public diplomacy is a strategic effort to understand and engage foreign populations and to help them appreciate how U.S. policies would help advance their own interests, too.