Joshua Treviño

Palin remarks preview.

We still do not have the full text of Sarah Palin’s remarks this evening, but we’ve been issued non-embargoed excerpts. The excerpts are a mere four passages, and there’s a theme to three of them: the critics of Palin’s selection are inside-the-Beltway elitists, and Sarah Palin is an ordinary woman who faces down long odds [...]

The fiasco at Invesco.

Barack Obama’s acceptance remarks this evening should be a source of relief to every Republican, conservative, and McCain supporter in America. The Democratic nominee for President walked to the podium with every advantage: eloquent, attractive, historic, gifted with a polling advantage, and bathed in the bright lights of one of the great football stadiums of [...]

Georgia’s defeat and America’s options.

What Mikheil Saakashvili began at his discretion, Vladimir Putin ends at his pleasure. The Russians have called a halt to their offensive in Georgia, and none too soon for the Georgians. What remains is the postwar settlement, and the American part in it. A look at the situation on the ground speaks to the Russian dominance [...]

America’s Stake in the Caucasus.

America’s stake in the Caucasus war just went up. In the past 24 hours, the Russians launched offensive operations beyond the secessionist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, marking a dramatic expansion in their war aims — well beyond the putative casus bellum of protecting Russian citizens. (It should be recalled that these “citizens” are Abkhaz [...]

Russia, Georgia, and the Western Alliance.

The Russian war aim in Georgia, inasmuch as it may be discerned after a bare 48 hours of full combat, appears to be what I said it likely is: “the Russians [will] fully occupy South Ossetia, along with the other secessionist region of Georgia, Abkhazia; declare them both independent or somehow annexed; and thoroughly punish [...]

War in the Caucasus

The first thing to understand about the war between Russia and Georgia is that Georgia has lost. As Doug Muir explains, seizing South Ossetia required the quick severing, and then holding, of a single key route leading from the Caucasus peaks to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. A look at the terrain tells the [...]

John McCain’s Long Odds

The big news in polling this week is that John McCain has caught up with Barack Obama. Supposedly this race is now a race, and we may enter the full-blown national election season after Labor Day with the outcome truly up in the air. Don’t believe it. Nothing is impossible, and John McCain may yet be [...]