The Kremlin has already nullified the agreement on cessation of hostilities in Georgia, which French President Nicolas Sarkozy had brokered with Presidents Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow and Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi on August 12-13. Russia has junked the six-point agreement in the traditional way of Russian and Soviet diplomacy in Europe’s East: It eviscerates an international agreement of its content while preserving its carcass for continuing reference to excuse Kremlin actions. Meanwhile, the Russian government and military are using the armistice agreement’s loopholes to delay the withdrawal of troops and to justify the continuing predatory movements of Russian troops deep inside Georgia’s territory.

The Medvedev-Sarkozy document reveals glaring procedural flaws. Presented by Sarkozy to Saakashvili for signing, and bearing Sarkozy’s hand-written inserts, the French-language document was evidently typed by the Russians and handed to Sarkozy during his Moscow visit. The tell-tale signs are obvious. The document’s preamble names …

In sum, Russia threatens to cut up Georgia, informally but methodically, on several levels: 1) in Abkhazia and South Ossetia; 2) through additional buffer zones (glacis) beyond the secessionist areas; 3) by isolating some remote chunks of territory (Svaneti); 4) by cutting off the country’s east and west from each other and isolating Tbilisi; and 5) by controlling the seaboard. Cumulatively, these moves enable Moscow to threaten to dismember Georgia as a means to force a change of government in Tbilisi. In the next stage, Moscow may try to install local authorities in various parts of the country. Those authorities may then be forced to act without Tbilisi’s approval or even to declare insubordination to Tbilisi. Pro-Moscow groups are a very small fringe in Georgia. The Russians, however, can create supply problems and law enforcement difficulties in order to force local authorities to work with Russian occupation authorities, even if …

In recent years, a small army of happiness gurus has lined up to proclaim the ills of modern society, and its failure to make us feel better. We have more money, say some, but family life has eroded. We live longer, but crime has risen. Some have even blamed affluence itself, arguing that the dizzying range of lifestyle options that we now confront frustrates the pursuit of happiness. Yet contrary to the assertions of pessimists, newly released data, recently published in an article with colleagues from Jacobs University Bremen and the University of Michigan, shows that today’s world is a happier one. From 1981 to the present, more than 350,000 people from 90 countries were asked about their happiness and their satisfaction with life as a whole… How is it that the world is getting happier? In the …

"Europe can be proud of this success,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in our newspaper yesterday, referring to his negotiation of a cease-fire between Russia and Georgia. The congratulations may have been premature. Yesterday, in a by-now depressingly familiar pattern, Russian officials, up to and including the president, announced the withdrawal of forces from Georgia, while in Georgia itself there was no sign of withdrawal. On the contrary, Russian forces continued to dig in and loot as they occupied a large swath of Georgian territory. They remained in control of the central city of Gori and the western city of Senaki. They moved tanks into Igoeti, 22 miles from the capital of Tbilisi. They have wrecked the rails on a bridge of the main east-west railroad and taken control of the main east-west highway, essentially cutting off most trade and transport in Georgia. They have seized the Inguri power …

The new oil order has been emerging for a few decades. As late as the 1970s, Western corporations controlled well over half of the world’s oil production. These companies — Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total of France and Eni of Italy — now produce just 13 percent. Today’s 10 largest holders of petroleum reserves are state-owned companies, like Russia’s Gazprom and Iran’s national oil company. Sluggish supplies have prompted a cottage industry of doomsday predictions that the world’s oil production has reached a peak. But many energy experts say these “peak oil” theories are misplaced. They say the world is not running out of oil — rather, the companies that know the most about how to produce oil are running out of places to drill. “There is still a lot of oil to develop out there, which is why we don’t call this geological peak oil, …

Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet. “We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do,” says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. “We know what messages will work and what will not.” American Psychological Association leaders say they want to launch a national initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint and pay more attention to ways they can conserve.

European weakness is thus not a passing fad; it appears to be a long-term secular decline from both a strategic and an economic perspective. Their sclerotic global standing is but a result of socialist policies that have helped push the best and brightest away from the region, leaving in their stead a bunch of subsidy grabbers and welfare cheats. Flush with commodity wealth, both the Russians and the Arabs may be eyeing Europe for their expansionist policies. Thankfully for the Europeans, the latter group cannot muster anything more threatening than a bunch of camels at this point; at some stage in the next 20 years though that condition will change, especially if both Turkey and Pakistan are fully inducted into the fighting forces of the Wahhabi clans.

For now, that leaves Europeans contemplating coexistence with an increasingly belligerent Russia. With its economy doing rather well from the rise …

Russia planned for months, watching and learning from our response to Iran. The West told Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium and its nuclear weapons program. It hasn’t, and we’ve done nothing. Now, our lack of resolve has come back to haunt us. Knowing this, Russia executed its plan with brutal precision. Our weakness invited an attack — and will invite more if we don’t respond now. But the U.S. can do even more than just isolating Russia in diplomacy, or issuing pleas. We can also neutralize Putin’s use of the “oil weapon” — his implicit threat to cut off oil sales to the West — by drilling for more oil ourselves.