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It seems more apparent that Russia's war against Ukraine also aims to impose a new ideological-political order in Russia if not the entire Commonwealth of Independent States. At home, this war has featured a massive, unrelenting propaganda offensive depicting Ukraine as a Hobbesian nightmare of civil anarchy and Russia as a unique Christian civilization under siege from the secularizing and nihilistic West. Russia explains the siege against it in geopolitical terms — as an effort to prevent the country from becoming a great power again. Russia also presents the attack in ideological terms— as an attempt to foist an alien and corrupt Western civilization and culture upon it.

In the current debate over the Iranian bomb, the White House is staying quiet about its concerns over the regime’s progress on missile development. It’s the dog that isn’t barking.

Richard Falk, the current rapporteur for Palestine of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), is set to step down in the coming days. Falk’s primary legacy will be his consistent hounding of Israel, which he has accused, among other things, of engaging in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians. Unfortunately, Falk never placed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in its proper context, nor did he properly compare Israel’s actions to those of the more serious violators of human rights, including Syria, North Korea and Sudan. He has thus made a mockery of the U.N. and done a disservice to the Palestinian people.

Just how much is Vladimir Putin's Ukrainian adventure actually costing Russia? Quite a lot, it turns out.

New statistics from the Central Bank of Russia indicate that almost $51 billion in capital exited the country in the first quarter of 2014. The exodus, says financial website Quartz.com, is largely the result of investor jitters over Russia's intervention in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea.

We run the risk of missing critical aspects of Russian policy if we assume that Moscow's continuing invasions of Ukraine are exclusively about Russo-Ukrainian issues. One of the founding fathers of Soviet studies, Adam Ulam, observed back in 1965 that empire was the biggest obstacle to reform in Russian history.