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Ever a big-picture thinker, the U.S.-educated premier gave a speech this week commending Israel's founding premier David Ben-Gurion for making fateful decisions at a "heavy price," despite protests heard at home and abroad.Commentators, on the alert these days for any clue about a possible strike on Iran, spotted a subtext - that Netanyahu, too, was ready to take lonely action in Israel's interest.He could hope for a repeat of the 1981 attack on Iraq's atomic reactor and a similar sortie against Syria in 2007, when the anger of Washington's initial reactions quickly faded.

"So there's a huge public relations issue here: Can you make a credible case over the head of the administration, and get the American public to buy into the pain that is going to follow -- Americans being killed in terrorism, oil shock, whatever it is."For now, Kurtzer estimated, Obama administration warnings against unilateral Israeli strikes on Iran would account for "5 percent" of Israeli deliberations, with the Netanyahu government's military calculations taking the lion's share.

Its priorities include fending off Iran's promised missile reprisals and containing potential knock-on border wars with the Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas who are allied to Tehran.

"We'll be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of this critical region."

Xinhua said the US role could be good for China in helping to secure the "peaceful environment" it needed to continue its economic development.

But it added: "While boosting its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, the United States should abstain from flexing its muscles, as this won't help solve regional disputes. "If the United States indiscreetly applies militarism in the region, it will be like a bull in a china shop, and endanger peace instead of enhancing regional stability."

The acknowledged leader in this field is the US State Department, which now boasts more than 150 full-time social media employees working across 25 different offices. It uses familiar sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, as well as local equivalents, such as VKontakte in Russia. Ambassadors and other State Department employees are encouraged to establish an online presence.

"The State Department is really creating what is effectively a media empire that could soon be the digital equivalent of old school international broadcasters like the BBC," he says. "But they not only see it as part of a broadcasting strategy, they are looking at the wider potential." Social media acts like an early warning system of emerging social and political movements, he says. It is also a way of reaching online opinion formers, and a means of correcting misinformation very quickly.

The State Department now has an internal version of Wikipedia called Diplopedia, which has more than 14,000 entries. To encourage internal networking, there is also an equivalent of Facebook called Corridor - in the look and feel, the two are strikingly similar - which has over 6,500 members.

"The decision-making process by the prime minister was carried out without any orderly, coordinated, authorised and documented staff work," said the 158-page report of the May 2010 interception of the Mavi Marmara.

Lindenstrauss said Israeli discussions on stopping the Mavi Marmara was largely limited to one-on-one meetings that Netanyahu held with Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.Israel's security cabinet, which the prime minister is obliged by law to consult before major military endeavours, convened only five days before the raid.Its members "were unaware of the purpose of the debate and did not have enough time to prepare for it", the report added.

A U.N. inquiry involving Israeli and Turkish representatives last September largely exonerated Israel's Gaza strategy and interception of the Mavi Marmara, though it faulted the navy for excessive force. Two previous internal Israeli probes, by the military and a government-named commission of inquiry, reported limited tactical and planning errors in the raid's execution.

the polite fiction employed by Washington serves Asia-Pacific countries who seek security assurances from the far-away United States without sacrificing important trade with nearby China and its fast-growing economy."Treading too forcefully on China's interests can and has resulted in economic reprisals against Southeast Asian countries," said Scott Harrison of Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a consultancy in Manila.

Beijing responded last month to its South China Sea dispute with Manila by tightening quality controls on Philippine fruit and cutting the number of visits by Chinese citizens to the Philippines.

Some regional security experts, however, say the renewed U.S. emphasis on Asia has emboldened China's opponents in the South China Sea dispute, an outcome Washington might not have intended."The U.S. becoming involved has fired up the Philippines and Vietnam to contest things more strongly," said Sam Bateman, a retired senior Australian naval officer and maritime security researcher at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection"

Modern grand strategy consists of four critical elements: a unifying, long-term vision of a country's global values and interests; an estimation of where that country is and wants to go in the world; an assessment of the country's potential and capacity to achieve those objectives; and a comprehensive plan to reach the destination set forth.

Maximizing the advantages and capably advocating the shared interests, policies and values of one Europe in a competitive and heteropolar world will require that priority attention and adequate resources be directed towards: Nurturing policy capacity (development, analysis and implementation) in order to improve performance on issues such as Afghanistan Burnishing core professional skills (negotiation, languages, cross-cultural communication) through improved training and professional development Sharpening operational agility, flexibility and adaptability (continuous learning, empowerment, enabling tools), for instance, through better use of new media Establishing a representational footprint in the field that is keyed to receiving as well as sending state needs and circumstances Creating and connecting with wider networks, and; Mainstreaming public diplomacy and European brand management.

He said he would never have "been a party" to such a policy: "I regarded it [the policy of regime change] as improper and self-evidently unlawful."

Before that meeting Mr Straw wrote to Mr Blair - in a letter subsequently leaked - that "regime change per se is no justification for military action: it could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal". Asked whether No 10 had "pre-empted" the Foreign Office over Iraqi policy, Mr Straw said Mr Blair was "aware" that regime change could not be a basis for acting against Iraq nor could it be "disguised" as such.

Obama has narrowed the role of nuclear weapons in US defence strategy, but has also left significant loopholes that will disappoint arms control advocates.

The biggest change is arguably in the "negative security assurance" contained in the review, a guarantee the US will not use its nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. The Bush nuclear posture from 2001 (handily summarised here by GlobalSecurity.org) left open the option of using nuclear weapons against biological, chemical or mass conventional attack.

But here is the catch in the Obama doctrine. The tricky word is compliance. The US and its allies argue that Iran is not in compliance with its obligations under the NPT treaty, leaving Iran a potential target in the US nuclear operational plan. Depending on Syria's relations with the IAEA, the review could also be read as a warning to Damascus.

rule out a nuclear response to attacks on the US involving biological, chemical or conventional weapons. Nor would the US use nuclear arms on non-nuclear states that comply with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Mr Obama said he would make exceptions for states deemed in violation of the treaty, naming Iran and North Korea.

A White House statement on Monday said the new nuclear policy offered "an alternative to developing new nuclear weapons, which we reject".

Fresh from his success in signing a new strategic arms reduction treaty with the Russians in Prague, US President Barack Obama is hosting a nuclear security summit in Washington DC.With some 47 countries in attendance it will be one of the largest gatherings of its kind in the US capital since the late 1940s. This will be the third element in a nuclear season that began with this month's unveiling of the Obama administration's nuclear strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review. This identified nuclear proliferation - the spread of nuclear weapons and the danger that they might fall into the hands of terrorist groups - as now the key nuclear threat to America's security. That was step one. Step two was the meeting between Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in Prague that got the strategic arms reduction process back on track. Step three will be this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. All three events are aimed at strengthening Mr Obama's hand as he heads into step four: the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for next month in New York.

The threat here is not only from governments with a desire to own nuclear bombs or nuclear-tipped missiles. A far more pressing concern comes from the potential nuclear ambitions of non-state actors or terrorist groups. Their goal may be to obtain a small nuclear device but equally they may just want to get hold of radioactive material to build a so-called "dirty bomb". This uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a wide-area.

So the goal of this summit is to batten down the hatches on nuclear materials - especially the fissile materials that might be used in bomb-making, plutonium and highly-enriched uranium - but also the more widespread sources of radioactive substances that could be used for a "dirty bomb". President Obama's goal is to obtain agreement upon a plan to secure all such vulnerable nuclear material within four years. Much will depend upon the detail.

Congress should demand answers to questions like: What is the role of cyber war in US military strategy? Is it acceptable to do "preparation of the battlefield" by lacing other countries' networks with "Trojan horses" or "back doors" in peacetime? Would the United States consider a preemptive cyber attack on another nation? If so, under what circumstances? Does US Cyber Command have a plan to seize control and defend private sector networks in a crisis? Do the rules of engagement for cyber war allow for military commanders to engage in "active defense" under some circumstances? Are there types of targets we will not attack, such as banks or hospitals? If so, how can we assure that they are not the victims of collateral damage from US cyber attacks?