The New Republic

The swap--1,000 Palestinians for the young Israeli soldier captured in 2006 could be a minor breakthrough in the intractable Gaza standoff--and also support for the recent claim that the two sides have been secretly talking. READ MORE >>

Is someone from the Pentagon taking a shot at Holbrooke in that WashPost story on Obama's "reset" with Karzai that Jason linked? Note this: READ MORE >>

As Obama ratchets up the rhetoric against a dithering (heh) Iran, an opposition leader offers this advice: The international spokesman for Iran's main opposition movement called for President Barack Obama to increase his public support for Iranian democrats and significantly intensify financial pressure on Tehran's elite military unit, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. READ MORE >>

Well, not exactly. Ben Smith blogs my tweet about dining two tables away from the newest Justice at the modest but nice ($20 entrees), Brooklyn restaurant Po last night. Which is not a shocker, as Sotomayor once lived in the surrounding Carroll Gardens neighborhood. READ MORE >>

In an interview, Abbas says they're discussing a Palestinian state with temporary borders. Hamas is denying it. But if the talks were secret, that's to be expected.  The claim comes, perhaps not coincidentally, a few days after a senior Israeli general spoke in notably positive terms about how Hamas has nearly halted rocket attacks from Gaza, and also restrained other Palestinian militants of late. READ MORE >>

The NYT has the scoop. For an explanation of what the whole Rudy boomlet may have been about, check out the piece I wrote about Giuliani for New York magazine last month. The Times story linked here mentions recent talk that Rudy could challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. But I doubt it. From my NY mag story: READ MORE >>

The Washington Post writes today about the limits of Obama's biography in foreign policy. The paper's story notes that Obama talked extensively about his biography and personal experiences in Asia, then asks: But is his biography-as-diplomacy approach beginning to show its limits? READ MORE >>

I haven't said much about Obama's China visit trip, in part because I'm no expert on Sino-American policy. But what Peter Beinart says here rings quite true for me: READ MORE >>

An tricky difference of opinion on how to deal with Afghanistan's massive opium trade: The U.S. does not want to address the problem of drug production in Afghanistan, said Russia's anti-narcotics chief after talks with U.S. Special Envoy for AfPak Richard Holbrooke. READ MORE >>

As I argue in my recent print story on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the prevailing view in Washington foreign policy circles is that Gates, as an anti-Soviet hardliner at the CIA in the late 1980s, misread the import of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and failed to see the USSR's collapse coming. But here's a dissenting view, via email, from Andrew Hamilton, a former national security council staffer, among other government posts, as well as a longtime writer on foreign policy issues (who now write READ MORE >>