The nation\u2019s eyes are fixed on George Zimmerman\u2019s acquittal in Florida and Edward Snowden\u2019s life in global air-travel limbo.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a group of small stories from around the world tell of deeper dangers approaching.<\/p>\n
The first story comes out of Panama (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/m6tx2sp<\/a><\/b>). \u00a0Yesterday, a North Korean ship traveling from Cuba was detained while attempting to pass through the Panama Canal.\u00a0 The Panamanians suspected that the vessel was carrying drugs.\u00a0 This supposition suggests, of course, a narcotics trade from the Americas to the Far East, with the Hermit Kingdom presumably serving as a transit point to someplace else.\u00a0 There may be such a trade, but if so, the ship was not engaged in it.\u00a0 Instead, it carried cargo that was potentially far more lethal than a stash of cocaine.\u00a0 It was transporting sophisticated missile parts that, apparently, the Cubans had sold to the North Koreans.<\/p>\n But where would the Cubans have obtained such parts?\u00a0 No one has ever suggested that Cuba has high tech industrial capacity of any kind.\u00a0 Cuba must have been the broker \u2013 perhaps, even likely, with Iran on the other end, though why the Iranians would choose the Cubans as middlemen isn\u2019t clear.\u00a0 But wherever the parts originated, there is clearly a trade is strategic products underway among countries hostile to the United States, an alliance of those discontented with the current global security framework.<\/p>\n The second story is from Russia.\u00a0 Beginning last Friday, the Russian military began their largest and most sweeping set of war games since the collapse of the Soviet Union.\u00a0 According to the\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/i>\u00a0magazine website this morning (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/kwhsqh4<\/a><\/b>), the games were in response to a surprise order that Russian President Vladimir Putin issued four days ago.\u00a0 They involve 160,000 troops, 1,000 tanks, 130 aircraft and 70 ships and stretch from Russia\u2019s Pacific Coast and the Sea of Japan to a town north of Moscow.\u00a0 That\u2019s not all.\u00a0 Russian naval and counter terrorism exercises were conducted in the weeks preceding these massive exercises.<\/p>\n Why the escalation of Russian military activity.\u00a0 To some extent, this is part of Putin\u2019s effort to return Russia to great power status.\u00a0 He has made clear that he considers the fall of the Soviet Union a strategic calamity for Russia.\u00a0 He wants to reclaim the country\u2019s former global status.\u00a0 But what else?\u00a0 To what extent does Putin see American confusion and fecklessness around the world as an opportunity, to expand Russian influence \u2014 in the countries of the old Warsaw Pact for example?<\/p>\n The final story suggesting trouble ahead is actually two stories, both from China.<\/p>\n