The Crisis We Won't Predict

I managed to wean my focus away from the presidential campaign just long enough yesterday to read an outstanding op-ed by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post about how the next great international crisis and war could well ignite over.....Abkhazia.

"Ab-wha'?" you ask.

And that's Applebaum's point exactly. We're so consumed with our domestic election -- and, to the extent we're focusing overseas at all, with Iraq -- that we're paying scant attention to important, and potentially dangerous, developments around the world.

I once wrote about Abkhazia's independence movement, when I was based in Moscow, and yet everything in Applebaum's column was news to me. And I doubt Obama, McCain or Clinton has thought much about -- or been briefed on -- Abkhazia. Let's hope we all get away with it.