Around the watercooler today: A US-Europe Reset; Yemen may be the next to fall; Obama seeks stronger economic ties in Latin America; and Palin seeks stronger GOP support by visiting Israel.

Latin America watchers have been transfixed over the past week with developments in Honduras.  At first glance, the issue is simple: a group of armed thugs overthrew a democratic regime.  This sort of military coup — which echoes the regimes of cliched colonels in sunglasses — was thought to have been relegated to the Latin American past.

For some reason, American strategic planners can only conceive of the “Atlantic community” along an east-west axis. Azerbaijan, lying on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, can aspire to membership in the Euro-Atlantic world; after all, it is part of the European Union’s “Eastern Partnership” initiative and aspires to eventual NATO membership.

Russia and Cuba are getting cozy again.  After almost two decades of estrangement, the odd couple is back, and this time it’s an open relationship.  They are both looking to involve other partners, namely Venezuela and Nicaragua, and Russia has made clear there are no more lavish gifts like the old Soviet subsidized oil price.  But once again, it is a marriage of convenience, not a union of soulmates.