Geopolitics Weekly

The forecasts for the shape of the "global talent pool" in 2020 show China as rapidly expanding its graduate numbers - set to account for 29% of the world's graduates aged between 25 and 34.

The biggest faller is going to be the United States - down to 11% - and for the first time pushed into third place, behind India.

The US and the countries of the European Union combined are expected to account for little more than a quarter of young graduates.

The survey commissioned by Maariv newspaper found only 19 percent of Israelis would support the go-it-alone strikes threatened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative government, while 26 percent thought military action should be taken - but only with U.S. backing.

Twenty-nine percent said the Jewish state should not attack at all, according to the poll, which asked what it should do if foreign sanctions do not deny Iran the means to make a nuclear bomb.

The findings were largely similar to those of a survey published in March before the United States and five other world powers relaunched negotiations to try and rein in Iranian uranium enrichment.

Lieberman also said on Tuesday that Israel is ready to intervene militarily if there is any indication that Hezbollah is accessing chemical weapons in violence-wrecked Syria. His comments came amid reports that Syrian government forces had moved chemical weapons to airports near its borders - a day after Damascus warned that it could use them if Syria is attacked by an external force.

"In the moment we see that the Syrians transfer chemical and biological weapons to Hezbollah, this is a red line for us and from our point of view it's a clear casus belli," Lieberman said in Brussels

"We will act decisively and without hesitation or restraint," he added. "It will be a completely different ballgame and we hope for the understanding of the international community."

Mursi is under pressure from many in his movement to help ease the Gaza blockade. Palestinians accuse Egypt of being complicit in the blockade by closing its border with Gaza.Egypt's army-backed government decided in February to let more fuel into Gaza and increase electricity supplies.But Hamas has yet to see any sign of a policy shift since the election of Mursi, who is keen not to upset Egypt's ally, the United States, and weaken his hand in a struggle with the powerful military.

Turkey has set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria's rebels from a city near the border

"It's the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main co-ordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom,"

"The Americans are very hands-off on this. U.S. intel(ligence) are working through middlemen. Middlemen are controlling access to weapons and routes."

In a reference to Russia's ambitions in the Arctic, where Moscow plans to expand its claims, Putin said the navy would protect Moscow's interests in the icy North."Obviously, the navy is an instrument to protect national economic interests, including in such regions as Arctic where some of the world's richest biological resources, mineral resources are concentrated," he said.

Moscow has planned to submit a claim this year to redraw the map of the Arctic and give itself a bigger swath of the territory, which could hold huge deposits of oil, gas and mineral wealth.Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada and Denmark are at odds over how to divide up the Arctic seabed, thought to hold 90 billion barrels of oil and 30 percent of the world's untapped gas resources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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.

US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorising US support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, Reuters news agency said quoting sources familiar with the matter.

The White House has apparently stopped short of giving the rebels lethal weapons, even as some US allies have been doing just that.

A US government source acknowledged that under provisions of the presidential finding, the US was collaborating with a secret command centre operated by Turkey and its allies.

Speaking days after Russia's first deputy defence minister said two new nuclear submarines would be sent to the Pacific Fleet, Medvedev also said it was "important not to allow negative manifestations ... including the formation of enclaves made up of foreign citizens."His comments, some of the strongest on the subject yet, underlined the Kremlin's suspicions that a steady influx of Chinese migrants may ultimately pose a threat to Russian hegemony in the remote and sparsely populated territories of Siberia and the Far East.

Medvedev's new government, formed in May, included for the first time a Ministry of the Far East to underpin other state programmes already in place. One such programme has brought 400 families from other former Soviet republics to the area to reinforce its Russian-speaking population

Iran, handed geostrategic windfalls in the past decade by Washington's elimination of two of its main enemies, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, now fears the pendulum of regional influence could swing the other way.

The political and military hardliners in control say Syria stood by Iran in its hour of need, the only Arab nation on its side in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, and deserves loyalty now.They also view the conflict in Syria as an extension of a sectarian power struggle with Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia, as well as a U.S.-led campaign to shackle its nuclear ambitions by sanctions or if necessary by military force.

For Iran, "losing" Syria would be a damaging blow, but prolonged post-Assad instability might offer opportunities to a country adept at pursuing its interests in a conflict-ridden region, as it has shown in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."Assad is far from gone and even when he is, things are going to be chaotic for a while," said Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. ""And Iran thrives in that kind of context."

Israel and the secular government of Azerbaijan share the same goal: to check the spread of political Islam in general and Iran in particular.

Theirs is an alliance reinforced by hardware. In February 2012, Israel sold Azerbaijan $1.6bn (1.3bn euros) of sophisticated weapons systems.

Earlier this year, America's Foreign Policy magazine suggested the alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan went deeper than many had previously thought. The magazine reported that Israel had secured an agreement to use Azerbaijan's airfields in case it went ahead with a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

"The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain," Tutu argues, "fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us."

But it is Tutu's call for Blair and Bush to face justice in The Hague that is most startling. Claiming that different standards appear to be set for prosecuting African leaders and western ones, he says the death toll during and after the Iraq conflict is sufficient on its own for Blair and Bush to be tried at the ICC."On these grounds, alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in The Hague," he says.

DARPA is funding Boston Dynamics to create a line of tough robots to partner with soldiers and go where wheeled or treaded vehicles can’t. Earlier web sensations include BigDog, AlphaDog, PETMAN, and SandFlea, among others.

BigDog can travel over very rough terrain (snow, mud, rocks, hillsides) righting itself as it goes. PETMAN can perform complex motions (push up, squat and turn, or kneel) and likewise can adapt on the fly. Why not the WildCat?

Any number of other Libyan armed groups might have had a hand in the killings. But in truth, responsibility may also be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences. It was clear then, or should have been, that toppling Muammar Gaddafi was the easy bit. Preventing an Iraq-style implosion, or some form of Afghan anarchy, would be much harder.

Once again, the western powers have started a fire they cannot extinguish. A year after David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy jointly travelled to Libya to lay claim to a liberator's bogus laurels, the Libyan revolution they fanned and fuelled is in danger of degenerating into a chaotic, violent free-for-all.

Do not be misled by the fig leaf of this summer's national assembly polls. Post-Gaddafi Libya lacks viable national political leadership, a constitution, functioning institutions, and most importantly, security. Nationwide parliamentary elections are still a year away. The east-west divide is as problematic as ever. Political factions fight over the bones of the former regime, symbolised by the forthcoming trials of Gaddafi's son, Saif, and his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi.

in recent years, Qatar has taken steps to consolidate its control over the channel as the country seeks greater political influence in the Gulf.In September 2011, Wadah Khanfar, a Palestinian widely seen as independent, suddenly left as director-general after eight years in the post and was replaced by a member of the royal family, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim al-Thani, a man with no background in journalism.

The country is also at the heart of a strategic battle between Moscow and the west.

Two geopolitical visions, Atlanticist and neo-Soviet, collide in a landscape of ancient villages, medieval towers and breathtaking mountains.

Ivanishvili, whose $6.4bn (£4bn) fortune is put at half of Georgia's GDP

Henrique Capriles, who has gained ground in recent polls, said he would halt arms purchases from Russia, rethink relations with Iran and revise deals to exploit one of the world's biggest recoverable oil resources in the Orinoco belt.

Capriles said he would end the Chávez policy of promoting worldwide revolution and focus on Venezuela's needs."The foreign policy of this government is driven by politics – to extend a revolution worldwide. My objective with regards to foreign relations is to benefit all Venezuelans," he said.

"We have spent more than $14bn (£8.66bn) on arms purchases from Russia," Capriles said. "I am not going to buy more weapons. I think the policy has been mistaken."

Another unanswered question is Ivanishvili's policy towards Russia. The tycoon's international priorities are similar to Saakashvili's, and include European integration and Nato. But he has also pledged to improve relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ivanishvili said he would try to convince Russia that Georgia's strategic aspirations were not a threat.

Russia welcomed the result, saying ties that had been frozen in the wake of the 2008 Russian-Georgia war could be renewed.

"We are definitely looking forward for a fresh, new non-hostile, sober leadership in Georgia," said Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman.

For energy-poor western Europe, Georgia is a vital conduit for Caspian basin oil and gas exports that are not, for now at least, under Moscow's manipulative control. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin views Georgia very much as part of its backyard, a "near abroad" property (though the phrase is not much used these days) that should conform to Russian interests. Europe believes it belongs inside its post-Soviet, liberal pro-market "eastern neighbourhood".

The idea Georgia might one day join Nato – it already contributes through the Partnership for Peace scheme – and the EU is anathema to Russian nationalists. It is not coincidental that since 2008, when Putin sent his tanks deep into Georgian territory in support of independence for the breakaway satraps of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has effectively controlled about one-fifth of Georgia's total land mass.

The problem for both sides of this strategic equation is that Georgia's leaders – they might better be termed overlords – tend not to do what they are told, even by putative friends. Saakashvili's authoritarian, sometimes confrontational style, pockmarked by serial rights abuses including a recent prison torture scandal, has embarrassed his Brussels backers. The west wants a stable Georgian government, not one engaged in a personalised, potentially dangerous feud with the Putin regime.Yet the man behind the Georgian Dream opposition, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, could also prove an awkward customer, should he be confirmed as prime minister. Ivanishvili made his money, lots and lots of it, during Russia's corrupt oligarch era. He still reportedly holds a chunk of Gazprom shares. Saakashvili predictably labelled him a Kremlin stooge, a charge he denies.

The Iranian president accused his conservative rivals of complicity in exacerbating the crisis over the rial, saying they had contributed to the situation by launching a propaganda campaign against him. The president pointed the finger at Ali Larijani, the parliament speaker, and criticised him for giving an interview in which Larijani said mismanagement accounted for 80% of the problems and the sanctions 20%, comparing government policy to "Robin Hoodian economics"."The respected head of parliament should come forward and help instead of giving interviews," Ahmedinejad said.The deputy speaker, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, echoed Larijani, saying on Tuesday that the government's only enemy was "illusion". At least one Iranian MP accused the government of manipulating the country's foreign currency reserves amid speculation that Ahmadinejad might be summoned for questioning.

"The president has deliberately kept the market agitated," said Elias Naderan, of the parliamentary economics committee, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. "I really don't know what Mr Ahmadinejad is thinking. What plan does he have, what is his expectation of the system, and how does he plan to manage this disorder?" Despite several attempts to calm the markets, the government has failed to bring the rial under control. It has lost at least 57% of its value in the past three months after US and EU sanctions targeting the regime's nuclear programme came into effect in July.On Monday the rial experienced its biggest devaluation in a single day, dropping more than 15%.

On Tuesday, a senior official indicated that the government was relying on its security services to curb speculators, who are blamed for the rial's drop.