Public diplomacy strategies are rarely shaped by choice alone. This chapter examines the structural, strategic, and domestic constraints that influence how states design and deploy public diplomacy initiatives. It argues that three interrelated determinants are particularly significant: the international system and its geopolitical pressures, national interests and security priorities, and domestic political and institutional realities. These dynamics are then applied to the Saudi case, illustrating how the kingdom's economic interdependence and security partnership with the United States made the repair of negative public perceptions a strategic necessity after 9/11. Simultaneously, Saudi Arabia's religious identity, limited soft-power resources, and sociopolitical restrictions constrained the range of available public diplomacy tools. The chapter demonstrates that this tension between strategic necessity and domestic limitation was central to Saudi Arabia's turn toward educational diplomacy, which emerged as a credible, less politically sensitive, and internationally acceptable instrument for engagement with American society and institutions.