About a month ago, on the occasion of a lecture by Donald Rumsfeld at a confab of defense minister types in Singapore, I wondered idly how one says "chutzpah" in Chinese.

We've just received the answer courtesy of Justin Logan in, of all places, Astana, Kazakhstan where, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, we also learned how it's said in Russian and a few other languages of the region. As Justin notes, the participants included as honored guests nearby countries such as India, Pakistan and Iran.

Given the recent reemergence of security challenges in Afghanistan, and the apparent scrambling to beef up security -- shifting UK forces from Iraq, a few Aussie SAS to join special ops, etc. -- perhaps there's a bit of reassessment going on right now in Washington? Is there time still before the current Quadrennial Defense Review is due to rethink some of those lily pads ?