Congressional Republicans have mostly been bystanders in the foreign policy arena over the past 18 months, unable to muster the votes to block President Barack Obama remaking U.S. foreign policy to fit his more diplomatic, consensus-building vision. But now, with months to go before the midterm elections, they are flexing their muscles: for the first time in his presidency, Obama needs a super-supermajority of 67 Senators — including at least eight Republicans — to ratify the new START nuclear arms—control treaty with Russia, a cornerstone of his plan to seek the eventual elimination of atomic weapons.

President Obama’s ambitious agenda to curb nuclear weapons during his term has to a large extent stalled as he struggles to assemble a bipartisan coalition in the Senate to approve his arms control treaty with Russia.

The treaty, called New Start, was supposed to be the relatively quick and easy first step leading to a series of much harder and more sweeping moves to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Instead, a Senate committee on Tuesday shelved the treaty until fall, when it faces an uncertain future in the midst of a hotly contested election season.

The most obvious clue that Alexander Lukashenko’s MySpace page is a fake is that it claims he has 315 friends. The Belarusian President has no friends — at least none that can help him maintain his political footing. It’s nice to have pals in Venezuela and Iran, but Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have moribund economies of their own to manage. That’s why Belarus could become the latest former Soviet republic to face an economic and political storm.

First off, I would like to reject any notion of the Georgian leader’s psychological ill health or any particular irrationality of his. Unfortunately, we often try to link our failure to understand a given politician’s motives with the absence of outwardly rational motives for his conduct. First of all, since August 2008, the Georgian president has spoken more than once about the «Russian threat.»

Should Russia be considered a victim of Soviet-era totalitarianism — or is the present Russian elite working to advance a neo-communist revival? A highly influential academic, Edward Lozansky, thinks so and is working for Russian victimhood while ignoring the Communist revival in that nations.

At present, a highly regarded and influential academic, Edward Lozansky, is working for U.S. acceptance of the idea that the Russian nation was a victim of Soviet oppression, like so many other nations and nationalities.

Even now when Boris Djerassi goes to a meeting of Olympic alumni and mentions that he was a member of the 1980 summer team, he’s reminded about something he can never forget. "They’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re the team that didn’t go,’ ’’ he says. "What a knife to your heart.’’

Thirty years after Jimmy Carter kept the US athletes home from Moscow in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, where, ironically, the Americans now are entangled in a war of their own, the frustration and sense of loss remain fresh. "It’s the team that never was,’’ says Djerassi, a hammer thrower who never got another chance to compete.

When the new school year starts, Georgian students will receive a new history textbook chronicling 200 years of Russian occupation. The textbook is the result of a special commission created by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to examine the shared history of the two countries. Russians are not impressed. «Where is the logic?» asked Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chairman of information policy during an interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. «Do they really want to raise a generation that will consider Russia a monster?»

Congressman Dennish Kucinich is a former presidential candidate, and was reelected into a seventh term in Congress, representing the 10th District of Ohio. Professor Johan Galtung is the founder and director of TRANSCEND-International. Theydiscuss the proposal for a Department of Peace.

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. Now joining us on The Real News is Congressman Dennis Kucinich. He’s a former presidential candidate. He was reelected to the seventh term in Congress representing the 10th District of Ohio. And Professor Johan Galtung. Professor Galtung is the founder and acting director of TRANSCEND International, a network dedicated to mediation and conflict resolution. He’s also the author of the book The Fall of the US Empire — And Then What?. So before we get to «And Then What», go back to the beginning. When did you make the Department of Peace proposal formally, and where is it at?

People in Russia don’t remember whether we won the First World War or not, but know for certain that we won the Second. For a time there was a depressing feeling that we had lost World War Three. From the end of World War Two until the late 1980s i.e. the life of an entire generation, Soviet people lived if not in the expectation, then in the realization that another war was inevitable. This realization, almost a sensation, was so routine and so much part of everyday life that people didn’t even notice it. But it played an important part in making people feel that they were leading such difficult lives and working so hard for a higher purpose. Only a future victory could compensate for daily difficulties or explain to us and to our children why our lives were so much poorer and more wretched than those of our future, and even former, enemies.

In the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s White House meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev—and the bizarre spy scandal that followed—inside-the-beltway commentators have renewed questions about the Obama administration’s «reset» policy toward Russia. Some of these questions are entirely justified. But not all.

Questions about the Obama administration’s policy toward Russia fall into two general categories: «can the reset produce the results the United States needs and wants (or should want)?», and «is the reset being executed effectively?».