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If the Kremlin stays true to its word, Russia on Saturday will begin loading nuclear fuel into Iran's Bushehr reactor. Once it does, it will usher in a new stage in the deepening crisis over Iran's nuclear program.

The 1,000-megawatt plutonium reactor, located near the southern Iranian port city of the same name, has been the public face of the Iranian regime's nuclear program since Tehran and Moscow concluded the agreement to build it, despite American objections, in early 1995. Construction was completed in 2004, but Bushehr has laid dormant for years, ostensibly because of disputes over financing between Russia and Iran, but really because of Moscow's recognition of Washington's worries about Iran's nuclear program.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.S.-India partnership is losing momentum under President Barack Obama’s stewardship. Fortifying the alliance was bound to be a secondary priority for any administration faced with a recession, a flagging war effort in Afghanistan, political stalemate in Iraq, stalled Middle East peace efforts, defiant pariah regimes in Iran and North Korea, and strategic tensions with China. Still, allowing the partnership to falter appears to have come easier to a president who never quite displayed George W. Bush’s zeal for the Indian-American relationship. To be sure, problems also exist on the Indian side. New Delhi has itself fallen into a form of post-honeymoon malaise, as the phase of grand political gestures gives way to tough technical negotiations. However, rather than mitigate the downside of this difficult period, the Obama administration is pursuing an agenda that further complicates it and, in doing so, risks some of the tremendous gains made in U.S.-India relations over the past decade.

What do you call an ally that tries to kill you? That's the question most Americans are asking in the wake of last month's dissemination by Internet clearinghouse WikiLeaks of some 92,000 classified U.S. military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. The files provide a sobering portrait of the true state of play on the War on Terror's first front. Far and away the most damaging disclosures, however, are those relating to the pernicious role being played by Pakistan, long regarded as a critical American ally in South Asia, in supporting and sustaining the anti-Western insurgency there.

That a Pakistani-born U.S. national was responsible for the latest attempted terrorist attack on U.S. soil should come as little surprise. Pakistan has stood, almost unchallenged, at the epicenter of global terrorism for the post-9/11 era. Individuals or groups based in Pakistan have been involved in the majority of planned attacks on Western nations since 2001 and the country has played a critical role in the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Finally, nuclear-armed Pakistan maintains a network of Islamist militant groups focused on targeting India and is now host to a ferocious Islamist insurrection of its own; an insurgency that is now more deadly than those in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In short, no discussion of counterterrorism is complete without an examination of Pakistan and its role in Western terror attacks, the Afghan War, and its own attempts to combat domestic terrorism.

Long-time observers of American politics know that in order to truly put your finger on the pulse of the nation, you have to watch Wall Street. Savvy Iran-watchers will tell you that to do the same in the Islamic republic, you need to keep your eye on the bazaar.

Iran's sprawling marketplaces are more than simply centers of commerce. They are home to a powerful class of merchants who historically have served as key power brokers in the country's labyrinthine political system. Indeed, as the renowned historian Walter Laqueur astutely pointed out in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the shah's loss of support among the country's shopkeepers and merchants was an important part of why Ruhollah Khomeini's clerical takeover ultimately succeeded. Simply put, Iran's businessmen no longer felt invested in the old, secular status quo. The rest, as they say, is history.

For years now, Sakineh Ashtiani has been incarcerated in an Iranian prison, sentenced to death by stoning for the "crime" of adultery. Until earlier this month, the case of the 43-year-old mother of two was known only to the select few who have been following her sad fate at the hands of the Islamic Republic. Today, however, her name has become a rallying cry to end the mullahs' suppression of human—and particularly women's—rights.

A widow living in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz, Mrs. Ashtiani was jailed in 2005 for adultery. She was convicted the following year of having "illicit relationships" with two men following the death of her husband, and received 100 lashes, the punishment Islam stipulates for sexual relations outside of marriage. Mrs. Ashtiani's ordeal did not end there. Her case was reopened in 2007, and new, graver charges of adultery while in wedlock were added. She was convicted once again, and this time sentenced to death by public stoning.

How stable is Saudi Arabia? Not very, according to at least one member of the Kingdom's ruling class. Last month Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, a prominent dissident now in exile in Cairo, issued an open letter to his fellow royals, urging them to abandon their desert fiefdom for greener pastures. According to the prince, the current social compact between the House of Saud and its subjects had become untenable, with the government no longer able to "impose" its writ on the people and growing grassroots discontent at the royals "interfering in people's private life and restricting their liberties." His advice? That King Abdullah and his coterie flee the Kingdom before they are overthrown--and before their opponents "cut off our heads in streets."

Does Washington care about freedom in Iran? On the surface, it seems like a silly question. Ever since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini swept to power in 1979, Washington policymakers of all political stripes have been holding out hope that a kinder, gentler regime would emerge in Tehran. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have expressed their support for freedom within the Islamic Republic, and both sides of the political aisle have condemned the regime's repressive domestic practices. Yet, concrete proof of the U.S. commitment to pluralism in Iran is hard to come by. The strategies by which the United States can assist Iran's opposition remain poorly understood and even less effectively implemented. This is unfortunate, since with the proper vision and political will, the United States can harness economic, diplomatic, and informational strategies to significantly affect the unfolding struggle for Iran's soul.

The new issue of Rolling Stone magazine has yet to hit newsstands, but its centerpiece - a devastating expose of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan - already has sent shockwaves through Washington. The article, copies of which already have found their way onto the Internet, paints an unflattering picture of a military commander at war with his own civilian leadership, replete with insults of sitting officials and serious charges of political malfeasance.

Since news of the piece leaked over the weekend, Gen. McChrystal has issued repeated public mea culpas and was forced to fly to Washington for an in-person dressing down by the president. The apologies were not enough; Wednesday afternoon, President Obama announced that he had relieved Gen. McChrystal of duty as commander of the Afghan theater.

A week from today, a federal judge in San Diego has an opportunity to right a grievous wrong - to reverse last year's decision by the Department of Homeland Security to deny political asylum to a young Palestinian man who, over the course of a decade, prevented the deaths of potentially thousands of innocent people in Israel and the territories.

His name is Mosab Hassan Yousef and his life story, as recounted in his autobiographical Son of Hamas, reads like the best in historical fiction - though his extraordinary tale is true, confirmed by Israeli intelligence.

At the mouth of the sprawling plaza that houses Casablanca's magnificent Hassan II mosque overlooking the Atlantic Ocean lie two squat, ornate buildings. In these structures, flanked by neatly manicured gardens and largely unnoticed by the outside world, the Kingdom of Morocco is forging what could become one of the world's most potent weapons against Islamic extremism.

The buildings are the future site of a new Quranic school, which--once formally inaugurated in the coming year--will serve as a magnet educational institution for the country's religious students, as well as those from the rest of the region. Its objective, my guide told me, will be singular and unequivocal: "To promote Moroccan Islam. Tolerant Islam."

Whatever happened to the Green Movement? A year after the fraudulent reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad galvanized a groundswell of popular outrage, protesters in the Islamic Republic are growing silent. This has led some observers to conclude that the country's counterrevolution has run its course. But a closer reading of events shows a movement that is still viable, if beleaguered.

North Korea's brazen, unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean warship last month has refocused international attention - and criticism - on the Stalinist regime situated above the 38th Parallel. Beyond the public outrage now coming from Washington, however, it's painfully clear that the White House doesn't possess much by way of a coherent approach toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) or its "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il.

What a difference a few years can make. A little more than a decade ago, regional rivals Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over the latter's sponsorship of the radical Kurdish Workers Party in its struggle against the Turkish state. Today, however, cooperation rather than competition is the order of the day, as highlighted by recent news that the two have kicked off joint military drills for the second time in less than a year.

The thaw in Turkish-Syrian ties is a microcosm of the changes that have taken place in Ankara over the past decade. Since November of 2002, when the Islamist-oriented Justice and Development Party, or AKP, swept Bulent Ecevit's troubled secular nationalist coalition from power, Turkey has undergone a major political and ideological metamorphosis. Under the direction of its charismatic leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP has redirected the Turkish ship of state, increasingly abandoning Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's ideas of a secular republic in favor of a more religious and ideologically driven polity.

With a headiness nourished by electoral victory, every incoming American president succumbs to "new president's disease" - the confidence that, with more brains, more effort, and a better staff in and around the Oval Office, he will succeed on longstanding challenges where his predecessors have failed.

No challenge has so dominated the time of recent presidents as the fiery mix of issues that span the Middle East. But, in addressing them, our presidents have consistently operated on the basis of a conventional wisdom from our foreign policy establishment whose central tenets have repeatedly proved false.

The latest issue to raise heckles [in India] has been cyberespionage. In January, India’s National Security Advisor MK Naryanan directly blamed China for multiple hacking attacks, and the chairman of India’s Cyber Law and IT Act Committee warned that same month that China had “raised a cyber army of about 300,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon the secured networks of other countries.” In April, a study by US and Canadian researchers claimed that a Chinese ‘shadow network’ had copied secret files of India’s defence ministry, potentially compromising some of India’s advanced weapons systems.

The coup that swept the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in early April caught almost everyone by surprise. The ouster of the country's strongman president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, after two days of rioting by opposition forces, likely at Russia's instigation, has fundamentally altered politics in the impoverished but strategically vital Central Asian state. In the process, it has called into question the stability of America's presence in the "post-Soviet space."

For the past two decades, many in the West have worried about the growth of Russo-Chinese influence over the newly independent states of Central Asia. Through the mutual-security group called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and in scores of joint military exercises, counter-terrorism maneuvers and energy projects, the two great powers collaborated closely in order to keep these buffer states peaceful, compliant and relatively free of American penetration. Lately, however, a perceptible shift has overtaken the region. In 2010, the biggest threat to China and Russia's Central Asian interests may now be each other.

Last March, when the Obama administration's outreach to Russia was still in its embryonic stages, America's chief diplomat made a major gaffe. Meeting in Geneva with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented him with a symbolic red button, meant to signify the "reset" of bilateral relations publicly being advocated by the new president. But the button was mislabeled; in a glaring error of translation, it boasted the label peregruzka (overload), rather than perezagruzka (reload). Both Clinton and Lavrov were quick to laugh off the incident, but a serious message had inadvertently been sent: that the Obama administration was woefully out of its depth on foreign affairs.

That unfortunate episode sprang to mind last month, when Presidents Obama and Medvedev announced that work on a successor to the now-defunct 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) had been concluded. Details of the deal--predictably named "New START"--have now been made public, and they confirm that the latest exercise in U.S.-Russian arms control is flawed on at least three fronts.

At the heart of President Obama's nuclear weapons policy lies a key assumption - that Iran, North Korea and other "rogue" states are susceptible to threats of isolation and tempted by global acceptance.

He may be right - and I hope he is - but history offers compelling evidence to the contrary.

Politics can offer some strange second acts. Just ask Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate turned would-be presidential candidate who is now flirting with joining forces with Egypt's main Islamist party. Since leaving his post as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in December, the 67-year-old diplomat has dipped his toe into electoral politics in his home country of Egypt. While still notional, ElBaradei's possible candidacy in the country's 2011 presidential election has galvanized Egypt's long-moribund political opposition.

Great athletes describe how, during moments of success, they feel as if time is slowing down so that - whether they are leading a fast break or awaiting a 95-mile-an-hour pitch - they see the game unfold in a kind of slow motion. In the arena of public affairs, we, too, have the power to step back and watch a new world unfold as if in slow motion. What seemed like disparate events as they occurred over the course of weeks, months or longer can, upon reflection, reveal a consistent pattern of activity with a predictable conclusion. And so it is with Iran's nuclear program.

Just how durable are the ties between Russia and Iran? For years Western policymakers have been attempting to understand--and end--what is arguably the Iranian regime's most important international partnership. Recent weeks have only added urgency to the question, as the West ramps up its desperate scramble to stop Iran's relentless march toward the bomb.

Change is afoot in Pakistan. Evidence was on display in early February, with the capture of the Afghan Taliban’s number two commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in a joint operation by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence. The arrest of Baradar, who had been operating with relative impunity in Pakistan for years, was met with elation in Washington, where officials have been fruitlessly pressing the Pakistanis to crack down on the Afghan Taliban since 2001.

If it's true that in politics you are judged by the caliber of your enemies, Yukiya Amano is off to a stellar start. The 62-year-old Japanese technocrat has only been at the helm of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for two months, but he is already exceedingly unpopular with the Iranian regime.

What do al-Qaida's leaders fear most? It's not the more stringent screening requirements imposed by the Transportation Security Administration in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing by Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Nor is it the long-awaited deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration's AfPak plan. And it certainly isn't the prospect that al-Qaida foot soldiers might end up in U.S. federal court, whether in New York or anywhere else. Rather, what keeps Osama Bin Laden and his followers up at night is the prospect that the Muslim world might get wise to their dirty little secret: that supporting al-Qaida is hazardous to your health.

What can the Obama administration do about Iran's drive to develop nuclear weapons?

The president's informal year-end deadline for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse with Iran has come and gone. Iran recently announced that it plans to build 10 nuclear fuel plants and has moved to enrich uranium to a higher level than necessary for peaceful purposes. As a result, the center of gravity within Washington policy circles is moving toward punitive measures against the Islamic Republic in the hope of curtailing its persistent nuclear ambitions.

Yet in order for the tougher measures it contemplates to be effective, the White House will need to know a lot more about the Iranian program than appears to be the case currently. A comprehensive reevaluation of what we know about Iran's atomic drive -- and what it means -- is in order.

There's an old saying, familiar to historians and foreign policy practitioners, that "geography is destiny." A modern twist to this rule is that demography is no less decisive.

Russia is finding this out the hard way. Over the past several years, under the direction of former President (and current Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin and his handpicked protege, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia may have re-emerged on the international scene with a vengeance. But behind all of the Kremlin's contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a demographic and socioeconomic death spiral.

The funny thing about windows of opportunity is that they have a way of closing. Over the past year, spurred by mounting worries over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Congress has taken up the issue of economic pressure against the Islamic Republic in earnest. The result is a series of sanctions bills aimed at targeting what is commonly viewed as the regime's economic Achilles' Heel: its deep dependence on foreign refined petroleum.

A funny thing happened in the skies over Norway last month. On Dec. 10, as U.S. President Barack Obama geared up to deliver his acceptance speech before the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo, spectators outdoors were treated to a spectacular display of spiraling light. The cause was not a UFO, as some contended, but a failed test of the Bulava, Russia's newest sea-launched intercontinental ballistic missile. The episode was a telling reminder of the shifting strategic balance between Washington and the rest of the world.

Another month, another fissure within the Islamic Republic. In the six months since Iran's fraudulent presidential elections brought protesters out into the streets en masse, the Iranian regime has weathered a profound and sustained domestic crisis of confidence. The latest sign of this discontent began on Dec. 7, when tens of thousands of students clashed with regime security forces on university campuses throughout Tehran in days of unrest. This protest and numerous others like it serve as a telling reminder that the rift between the Iranian people and the thuggish theocracy that rules them remains as deep as ever.

Remember Moqtada al-Sadr? Just three years ago, the firebrand cleric and his feared Mahdi Army militia were the scourge of the coalition in Iraq, spearheading the Shia opposition to the United States and its allies in the former Ba'athist state. Since then, the man who ranks as one of Iraq's most notorious native sons has largely disappeared from view, preferring flight rather than fight in the face of an increasingly assertive central government in Baghdad. Now, however, there are signs that Sadr is poised on the brink of a major political comeback – one that could significantly reconfigure Iraqi politics.

When it comes to Iran, the Obama administration could learn a thing or two from Europe. That is because, even as Washington clings doggedly to its plans for "engagement" with Tehran, there are signs that a new consensus is emerging in Europe about confronting the Islamic Republic.

On Nov. 24, the Dutch parliament caused a minor political earthquake on the Old Continent when it voted to designate Iran's powerful clerical army, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), as a terrorist group under Netherlands law. The same measure also called for the IRGC to be put on the European Union's terror list--a step that would harmonize U.S. and European approaches toward Iran's ideological army.

By now, the idea that the struggle against radical Islam is in large part a battle of ideas has become widely accepted. Our statesmen, diplomats and political leaders regularly intone that we are engaged in a monumental conflict between freedom and fear, between democratic values and religious totalitarianism, and between individual liberties and religious fiat. But is the United States actively engaging in this struggle? Sadly, all of the available evidence suggests that it is not. Eight years into the fight, America still lacks anything remotely resembling a coherent strategy for competing on the Muslim world's intellectual battlefields. And without one, it has steadily ceded the strategic initiative to its adversaries, who do.

When the eight states that now constitute Central Asia and the Caucasus freed themselves from the grip of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was perhaps inevitable that outside powers would rush to fill the vacuum. Of the eight at least three, the Caspian Basin states (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan) found themselves awash in natural resources. The remaining five (Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), though less endowed materially, are strategically situated along crucial energy, trade, and logistics corridors. The combination of renewed interest and a reopened playing field in the heart of Eurasia resulted in the rise of a new “Great Game,” reminiscent of the great-power contest of the 19th century between the British and Russian empires over access to India glorified by Rudyard Kipling in his day. A decade-and-a-half on, this Great Game has matured, and undergone important changes. More important, however, as the energy struggle evolved a new front in the Game emerged out of the ashes of the September 11th terrorist attacks: one that pits the United States against Russia for influence and basing rights in Central Asia.

The primary purpose of U.S. public diplomacy is to explain, promote, and defend American principles to audiences abroad. This objective goes well beyond the public affairs function of presenting and explaining the specific policies of various administrations. Policies and administrations change; principles do not, so long as the United States remains true to itself. Public diplomacy has a particularly vital mission during war, when the peoples of other countries, whether adversaries or allies, need to know why we fight. After all, it is a conflict of ideas that is behind the shooting wars, and it is that conflict which must be won to achieve any lasting success.

"This is the way the world ends," T.S. Eliot wrote in his epic 1925 poem "The Hollow Men," "not with a bang but a whimper." Had he written it today, Eliot could easily have been speaking about the strategic divorce taking place between Israel and Turkey - a monumental decoupling with the power to alter the correlation of forces in the greater Middle East.

Don't let the atmospherics fool you. The inaugural U.S.-Iranian parlay that took place in Geneva on Oct. 1 may have netted a pair of notable diplomatic concessions from the Islamic Republic, namely, a commitment to open its recently disclosed nuclear facility in Qom to international inspectors, and agreement in principle to having at least a portion of its nuclear cycle carried out on foreign soil. But Tehran is already giving indications of reverting to type.

In the wake of talks with Washington, Iranian officials have taken pains to reaffirm that they still view their nuclear program as an "inalienable" right. Not surprisingly, they have nixed the idea of foreign enrichment, demanded nuclear fuel imports from abroad, and announced plans to install a new generation of even faster centrifuges at the previously clandestine uranium plant in Qom. The message is clear: No matter the diplomatic niceties, Iran's nuclear program is not up for grabs.

The problem of North Korea has bedeviled policy makers in Washington for years. The notoriously opaque Stalinist state that sits above the 38th Parallel represents one of the world’s most intractable security dilemmas. Starting this spring, however, the challenge posed by Pyongyang has grown more acute. The defiant series of nuclear and ballistic tests carried out by Kim Jong Il in May has brought into sharp focus the growing threat posed by the North’s strategic arsenal—and precipitated a frenzy of international activity in response.

What's in a name? This spring, the Obama administration ignited a political firestorm when it replaced the phrase "war on terror" with the more antiseptic "overseas contingency operations." The turn of phrase led critics of the administration to conclude that, when it came to confronting our terrorist foes, the White House was trading substance for style.

Recent events have done little to dispel that notion. As John Brennan, the president's top adviser on counterterrorism, told an audience at the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies back in August, Team Obama defines the current conflict quite differently from its predecessor - as neither a "war on terrorism" nor a "global" struggle.

In the eight years since Sept. 11, the U.S. has devoted a great deal of funding and thinking to the struggle against radical Islam. There's at least one area where it's fallen short, though: It hasn't mounted a serious economic challenge to the activities and ideologies of terrorist groups on a grassroots level.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Obama administration's decision last Thursday to scrap missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic is that it was so long in coming. Mr. Obama has defended his decision on both technical and financial grounds. The Bush administration's plans to deploy ground-based interceptors in Poland and early warning radars in the Czech Republic were targeted as part of his campaign pledge to eliminate billions of dollars in missile-defense spending. Instead, the White House now has pledged to develop a new theater and sea-based missile-defense architecture for Europe that "will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies." But what about defense of America?

When the Fatah Central Committee convened its sixth party conference last month in Bethlehem -- the first such meeting in twenty years and the first ever held on Palestinian Authority territory -- one might have expected a bit of soul-searching. After all, more than two decades after the Palestine Liberation Organization and its main political faction met America's prerequisites for a dialogue by rhetorically recognizing Israel's right to exist, renouncing terrorism, and accepting United Nations Resolution 242, a casual observer might assume that a re-examination of revolutionary principles was in order. Yet nothing of the sort occurred.

After months of dithering and delay, the Iranian government appears to have grudgingly accepted the U.S. president's diplomatic overtures. Just shy of the deadline for dialogue set by the White House, the Islamic Republic has announced its readiness to offer new "proposals" for talks over its nuclear program.

The move is a political victory of sorts for Obama, who has made "engagement" with Iran a centerpiece of his Middle East policy. But it might end up being a Pyrrhic victory. If true to form, Iran will likely try to use the upcoming talks with Washington the same way it did previous ones with Europe -- as a way to play for time and add permanence to its nuclear project. For Obama to convince Iran's rulers that the costs of their nuclear effort will far outweigh the perceived benefits, talking alone won't be enough; the White House will need real leverage over Tehran.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently in Thailand that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the U.S. will offer allies in the Middle East a "defense umbrella" to prevent Iranian intimidation. That's a fine sentiment, but it raises the question: Are we capable of doing so?

The answer is more complicated than most people think. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and associated delivery systems since the collapse of the Soviet Union means that any "defense umbrella" will require the deployment of missile defense technologies capable of neutralizing a potential salvo of nuclear-tipped missiles—whether from Iran or another rogue such as North Korea.

Yet America's missile-defense efforts are being scaled back. Congress is contemplating a $1.4 billion reduction to the Pentagon's budget for antimissile capabilities.

How should the U.S. respond to Iran's post-election turmoil? A month and a half after a fraudulent election sparked popular outrage among ordinary Iranians and an unprecedented outpouring of opposition onto Iran's streets, that question continues to bedevil policymakers in Washington. The depths of the administration's dilemma are readily apparent. There is a way out of this impasse, however; one capable of satisfying the administration's supporters and its critics.

President Obama has completed his first in-depth engagement with the Russian leadership during his Moscow visit. From an outsider's perspective, he gets a B-plus for substance but no better than a C on form. On balance, then, a B-minus. The new American administration's relations with Russia are a process, adjusting the policies of the previous Bush administration to its own goals. The main areas of change are three: treaty-based strategic nuclear arms control; Afghanistan; and a structure for other bilateralcooperation. This process began with the meeting of the two presidents in London. The Moscow summit represents progress on their first meeting in each area, but each is a shell waiting for real achievement. In each case, the serious work is still ahead.

What to do about Afghanistan? Ever since taking office in January, President Obama has received no shortage of advice about the proper way forward on the first front of America's struggle against radical Islam. Some have argued that Afghanistan is politically the same as Iraq — a war of choice in which America has little at stake, and even less idea of how to achieve victory — and counseled withdrawal. Others have acknowledged Afghanistan's strategic importance, while stressing that nothing more is required than simply relying on Coalition and NATO support to continue fighting an insurgency that is now in its seventh year. Still others have suggested that lightning can in effect strike twice, and the very same "surge" strategy adopted by the Bush administration in 2007 to deal with Iraq will reap dividends in Afghanistan as well.

The peaceful, side-by-side rise of China and India has been taken for granted in many quarters. But tensions between the two giants are mounting, and Washington would do well to take note. On June 8, New Delhi announced it would deploy two additional army divisions and two air force squadrons near its border with China. Beijing responded furiously to the Indian announcement, hardening its claim to some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory that China disputes.

These are hopeful and perilous times in Tehran. Ever since the blatant fraud of Iran's June 12th presidential election, popular opposition to that country's ruling clerical order has been on the rise, leading more and more observers to wonder whether Iran could really be on the cusp of another revolution. Maybe so. But any analysis of the current situation in Iran must begin with the acknowledgement that revolutions, properly understood, are notoriously hard to predict.