Earlier this week, Barack Obama again rejected Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign claim that Russia is America’s biggest “geopolitical foe.” In fact, Obama said, Russia is a regional power acting out of “weakness,” adding that he worries more about a mushroom cloud over New York City than he does about Vladimir Putin.

In the wake of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, public concern about Russia has increased, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Even so, when given the choice, more describe Russia as a serious problem but not an adversary (43%) than say it represents an adversary (26%). Just 22% say Russia is not much of a problem.

Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed here Monday that the United States should honor its commitment to respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity on the Taiwan and Tibet issues. At a meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit slated for Monday and Tuesday, Xi said Washington should never support any activities aimed at separating China.

Michelle Obama has embarked on a weeklong trip to China, together with her mother, Marian Robinson, and daughters, Malia and Sasha. Critics of the trip point out that the Robinson-Obama visits to Beijing (Great Wall), Xi’an (terra-cotta army), and Chengdu (pandas), will do nothing to illuminate or alleviate tensions in U.S.-China relations.

The Saudi royal decree against terrorism in February 2014, and later the Interior Ministry declaration in March banning several Islamist groups, can be considered as the general framework of the new security doctrine that will govern the behavior of the Saudi government in the coming period.

If only America were fighting more wars, Russia would never have taken Crimea. That’s basically the argument John McCain made last Friday in The New York Times. “For five years,” he complained, “Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding’.… In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed.”

South Korea is open to a summit with Tokyo but demands Japan first take sincere steps on historical issues to create the right conditions for talks to produce substantial results, a spokesman for South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Monday.

Vladimir Putin appears well on his way to reclaiming the Crimea for Russia, restoring the peninsula to a status forfeited by Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union in 1954. But this territorial achievement may provide only temporary distraction for Russia’s 140 million people who have seen their quality of life deteriorate dramatically since Putin took power in 1999.