The governments in Russia and China very much want to uphold the principle that every now and then the state must crush people who want freedom. That is why they worked together to veto a fairly toothless United Nations resolution condemning the regime in Syria and calling for President Bashar Assad, the lipless murderer who runs the place, to step down.

Kim Jong-il's death perforce marks a turning point in modern Korean history. Not since Douglas MacArthur’s push toward the Yalu has the future of the North Korean regime been as uncertain as it is today.

It's well and good to worry about Pyongyang's nuclear capability, but it also matters for reasons the West seems disinclined to think about.

As the Russian protest movement expands and radicalizes in the lead-up to the March 4 presidential election, the key question is not whether Vladimir Putin--and Putinism--will survive.

The glorious revolution that swept through Russia 20 years ago ushered in a new political system, changing the country's economic foundation while creating a new state: post-imperial Russia. Where did it all go? What happened to the noble fervor, the moral clarity, the thirst for truth, the heroism?

North Korea is a totalitarian state and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. With an arsenal of nuclear weapons, the Kim Jong Il regime could present a threat of heretofore unknown proportions. Notwithstanding the clarity of such a threat, solutions are elusive. Most...

For years, the threat of instability in North Korea and Pakistan has haunted US foreign policy, challenging the United States to develop an effective plan for confronting and reforming these unstable regimes. And until the US changes course, North Korea and Pakistan--kindred spirits in diplomatic deception--will be happy to continue business as usual.

Washington's South Asia strategy ought to be shaped less by the memory of failure, and more by an under-rated success: the transformation of once conflict-ridden Southeast Asia into an oasis of peace and relative prosperity.