Supposedly tomorrow Leon Panetta, the CIA Director, is going to become our Secretary of Defense! And General David Petraeus, who ran our "situation" in Afghanistan, is going to become the head of the CIA! (He will now report to James Clapper, who has had so far quite a successful career, despite running into trouble over signing on to the existence of WMDs in Iraq and more recently for suggesting that Gaddafi would win in the Libyan uprising.) Marine General John Allen is supposedly going to take Petraeus' job in Afghanistan! Ryan Crocker, former ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon will become our ambassador to Afghanistan, [...]

Mitt Romney's former senior foreign policy advisor and sometimes State Dept. super-spook infiltrator Liz Cheney has a new crusade, which is much like all her other crusades, as she wends her way to some sort of public office somewhere someday (Virginia? Senate?). So she is in the lobbying and fake grassroots organization business now with Washington Post columnist Bill Kristol! And also Debra Burlingame, another lawyer who is the co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America. Their argument? That the previous administration is the one who kept America safe from terror, and the Obama administration is basically not torturing enough people to keep America safe. [...]

Foreign Policy examines the difficulties of exercising hegemonic power in modern society when faced with an insistent opponent of disproportionate strength.

"It will be back to business as usual with a repressive, U.S.-backed military regime, only now the opposition will be much more radical and probably yet more Islamist. The historic opportunity to have a democratic Egypt led by those with whom the U.S., Europe, and even Israel could do business will have been lost, maybe forever. Uncle Sam will have to eat yet more humble pie, served up by the dictator who has just been insulting him." —Foreign Policy's Robert Springborg says that with the military now controlling the future of government in Egypt, any chance at democracy has been lost.

If you were dying for an explanation of the Putin/Medvedev relationship in handy gallery form-and, really, who wasn't-today's your lucky day! Learning can be fun!

"The result is a vicious circle in which Israel feels that its existential fears are not taken seriously. Israel's electorate moves towards leaders who address but also keep reinforcing its fears. International opinion becomes ever more negative, which in turn reinforces Israel's isolation which in turn raises existential fears. This has one, very unfortunate, consequence. Israel's best chance of minimizing the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah and minimizing Iranian influence in the Middle East is to engage with the Arab League peace initiative. If Israel were to normalize relations with all of the Arab and most of the Islamic world, particularly Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas would be isolated to the [...]

Remember the South Ossetia War last summer? No? Well, perhaps you remember it from the McCain-Obama debates; McCain used it to attack Obama on foreign policy. He said: "I was interested in Senator Obama's reaction to the Russian aggression against Georgia. His first statement was, 'Both sides oughta show restraint.' Again: a little bit of naivete there. He doesn't understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia." Well. Now a European Union report due in September "is expected to place the responsibility" for the war on the president… of Georgia.