Well, North Korea has the world’s attention. Exploding a nuclear bomb and launching missile tests will do that. All that’s left now is for the world to respond.
North Korea has long been a foreign policy conundrum, frustrating a long line of U.S. presidents who’ve attempted to stop the so-called hermit nation from threatening its neighbors. [...]

Some good news already from G20:
After a meeting between the two men in London, on the eve of the G20 summit, President Obama also accepted an invitation to fly to Moscow in July, by which time both sides hope negotiators from both countries will have worked out an arms control deal to replace the Strategic [...]

Yesterday they cut off their natural gas supply to the Ukraine. Completely.
That also means the supply to numerous European countries has been severely diminished.
From AP:
The Russia-Ukraine natural gas dispute hit Europe with the force of a winter storm Tuesday, cutting or limiting supplies to nearly a dozen nations. Tens of thousands of people were left [...]

For the second time since the Barack Obama won the U.S. Presidential election, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a none-too-subtle threat aimed at his soon-to-be American counterpart.
Medvedev — who is starting to make his patron, the former KGB apparatchik, Vladimir Putin, look soft — warned that Russia was prepared to use force to secure unspecified [...]

Keep in mind that the following is coming from a critic of the Georgian administration, but he was an insider and he also went before his own government to give his assessment of the situation.
From BBC:
Erosi Kitsmarishvili, a former envoy to Russia, was testifying at a parliamentary commission hearing into the war the breakaway Georgian [...]

Vladimir Putin continues to consolidate power…
From TNR:
If any proof were needed that the Russian political system operates in its own time-space continuum, it came this morning, when the parliament decided to deal with the country’s economic meltdown by amending its constitution.
The Duma fixed the 1993 text by decoupling presidential and parliamentary elections and approving [...]

Yes, they went there.

But hey, you can’t say we didn’t warn Palin. I railed against that idiotic “Russia/Alaska” assertion from day one, but the McCain camp continued to push it. And so they have to deal with copious amounts of ridicule and scorn. Not just because the point itself was dumb, but also because Palin [...]

I watched part of CNN’s “The Next President: A World of Challenges” forum on Sunday, but I missed this bit that reveals Colin Powell not only saying that Georgia started it, but it also appears that he backs away a bit from McCain’s response to the crisis.

As I’ve said before, Colin Powell’s endorsement could be [...]

Just watch…

That’s right. Sarah Palin has foreign relations experience because Alaska is near Russia.
Wow.
I also love how the other guy on panel talks about how politics is all about exceeding expectations. And since expectations are extremely low for Palin, she’ll be able to impress people.
I’m sorry, but isn’t that exactly how we got into this [...]

Andrew Sullivan pens one of the more level headed walks through the post Cold War era and details where we find ourselves now and where we must go…

The end of the Cold War was an opportunity to create a new one. For some, we now realize, the Cold War was not about democratic values versus [...]

And makes a lot of sense…
“Obviously, America should encourage both countries to back down and resolve their differences peacefully,” explains Barr. But “the status of South Ossetia, as well as Abkhazia, another Russian-supported separatist zone within Georgia, matters a lot more to Russia, on which the two territories border, than to the U.S. Moreover, Washington [...]

John McCain’s latest editorial is entitled “We Are All Georgians” and I have to say pretty bluntly that McCain absolutely does not speak for me.
First off, McCain’s not the President. Obviously he knows this, but when he says something so broad it feels like he’s speaking for America. Perhaps this isn’t what he meant, but [...]

Reports today that Russian forces have left South Ossetia and are moving toward Georgia’s capital of Tbilisi are troubling to say the very least. If Russia does indeed try to take the entire country by force and overthrow the government, we’re looking at a brand new geo-political ball game. Now, there’s no indication that permanently [...]

Greg Djerejian echoes what many in the blogosphere are saying about McCain’s hardline stance…
An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear his time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we’ll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He’ll be surrounded by second-tier [...]

At least that’s the latest report. We probably won’t have confirmation on this until sometime later today.
From NY Times:
MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia announced Tuesday that he had ordered a halt to his country’s military operation in Georgia, although he did not say that troops were pulling out and he insisted that [...]

I’ve been incorrectly saying “Ossetians” so I’ll use the correct verbiage from here on out. (Looks like both can be used, according to Mikhail Gorbachev)
This little factoid comes from the Times Online, which provides a very good timeline of what has gone down in the past, and sums it up as such…
Russia’s policy is driven [...]

This from Telegraph…
Mr Saakashvilli may also have banked on support from his closest ally, US president George W Bush, whose administration is said to have given tacit support for a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in the believe that the territory could be recaptured within 48 hours.
Obviously this is unconfirmed, but it would make a [...]

Today he asked the following…
When the “civilized world” expostulated with Russia about Georgia in 1924, the Soviet regime was still weak. In Germany, Hitler was in jail. Only 16 years later, Britain stood virtually alone against a Nazi-Soviet axis. Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and [...]

Obama gains 2 from yesterday to retake a sizable lead when compared to polling during the rest of the campaign. Meanwhile, McCain is still having trouble breaking the 44% barrier…a number he hasn’t climbed above since June 24th.

And on the Georgia/Russia conflict, Gallup agrees with my assessment that it’ll have not negligible effect…
The dramatic [...]