A picture spoke volumes about the United States' loss of global prestige and influence due to the shutdown of its government in a partisan standoff over the federal budget and debt. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin beamed front and centre in the family photograph of Asian leaders at last week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bali.

Thank you. Well, it’s my pleasure this morning to welcome Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi here to Winfield House in London – it’s the home of our American ambassador – and to have a conversation, an important conversation, about the urgency of the convening of the Geneva conference, to try to achieve peace for a new Syria. And we talked about all aspects of this current crisis.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that Washington's will consider resuming military aid to Egypt "on the basis of performance" that encourages democracy through elections. The US suspended some of its $1.5bn in annual military aid on Wednesday, but Kerry said on Thursday the deliveries could resume if Cairo moves to restore civilian rule.

As the program to destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons begins, the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is winning some rare praise from the West for its cooperation in the ambitious mission. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that it was a “credit” for the Assad regime that the process of destroying the chemical weapons had begun in “record time” and with the compliance of Damascus.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says China and Southeast Asian nations should resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea without threats or force. U.S. is making an effort to work more closely with Indonesia to help mediate those rival maritime claims.

"What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" US Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright reportedly famously asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell when the two clashed over what the United States might or might not do during the Bosnian crisis in 1992.

Something got lost in translation between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday - and it served to illustrate the level of distrust in U.S.-Russian relations. It happened when the two diplomats delivered opening statements before their high-stakes talks about how to inventory and dismantle Syria's chemical weapons.

I'm sometimes asked how, as someone who testified 42 years ago against the Vietnam War in which I had fought, I could testify in favor of action to hold the Assad regime accountable today. The answer is, I spoke my conscience in 1971 and I'm speaking my conscience now in 2013. Secretary Hagel and I support limited military action against Syrian regime targets not because we've forgotten the lessons and horrors of war -- but because we remember them.