FP Secretary Clinton released her happy Fourth of July message to her fellow Americans quite early, on June 25. Turns out, she won't be in the country on America's Independence Day because she has important work to do in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus -- some of it related to advancing the freedoms and values Americans celebrate on July 4.

Clinton will be visiting Ukraine, Poland, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia from July 1 to 5, the State Department announced Friday, June 25. In Ukraine, she'll meet President Viktor Yanukovych, who unlike his predecessor, does not support Ukraine joining NATO. In Poland, she'll celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Community of Democracies, a network of democracies dedicated to strengthening democratic norms worldwide.

In the Caucasus, Clinton will first visit Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have a long-running feud over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said during June 25's press briefing that the United States has "invested a great deal of energy" in improving relations among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey and that Clinton's visit is a "reflection of our commitment to work to resolve outstanding issues that have prevented normalized relations among those countries."

Clinton will conclude her trip in Georgia, which fought a war with Russia in August 2008 over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Crowley said of the visit to Georgia, "[T]he secretary's trip there will be a tangible manifestation of our ongoing commitment to Georgia's territorial integrity."