NATO, in its current form, is not up to its tasks. In the future, the alliance should see itself as a strategic framework for the three centers of power: North America, Europe and Russia. This trio has common interests that are threatened by the same challenges, and which require the same responses. If the alliance intends to be the primary forum for addressing all crises -- because it is the only forum where North America, Europe and Russia sit at the same table -- then it must now establish the requisite institutional framework for that to happen. The door to NATO membership should be opened for Russia. Russia, in turn, must be prepared to accept the rights and obligations of a NATO member, of an equal among equals.

Ukraine’s new pro-Russian President offered the Kremlin a chance to retain a base for its Black Sea Fleet on his first visit to Moscow yesterday. Viktor Yanukovych suggested that the fleet could stay in Crimea beyond 2017, when a 20-year lease is due to expire, overturning former President Yushchenko’s policy of ordering the Russians to leave. The fate of the fleet at the port of Sevastopol was a key issue in talks with President Medvedev at the Kremlin, as Mr Yanukovych sought to repair ties that were all but severed under his pro-Western predecessor.

Half a century after his death at the hands of the K.G.B., Stepan Bandera, a World War II partisan, has not lost his ability to rally Ukrainians against Russia — and against each other. Russians protested the move made by the departing Ukrainian president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, to award one of the highest state honors to Stepan Bandera, on posters, in Moscow on Friday. Monuments to Mr. Bandera have sprung up across western Ukraine, his fight for the country’s independence glowingly recounted to schoolchildren on field trips, as if he were the George Washington of Ukrainian nationalism. But in eastern Ukraine and as far away as Moscow and Brussels, Mr. Bandera is reviled as a Nazi puppet.

In his Annual Threat Assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, recently warned of renewed conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia over the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Georgia claims but Russia has recognized as independent states.  What Admiral Blair did not mention is that American support for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili – whose August 2008 attempt to seize South Ossetia by military force triggered a devastating reaction from Moscow – risks turning a Georgia-Russia quarrel into an unnecessary U.S.-Russia confrontation.

On the one hand the stunning defeat of Viktor Yushchenko, and by extension of the whole Orange carnival, is a welcome event for Russia and for Ukraine as well. However, one shouldn’t get too ecstatic because there is also a substantial potential danger ahead. The outgoing president leaves to his successor an economy in shambles, a devalued currency, a huge budget deficit and a national debt of over $33 billion.

Obviously, Washington needed a symbolic gesture of sorts to gild the pill of scrapping its missile-defense-shield-in-Poland plan. However, if this gesture is strictly symbolic, a more unsuitable place and time for it would be hard to find. Because whereas previously Russia was told that it had nothing to worry about BMD-wise, as the sole purpose of the system was destruction of Iranian or North Korean missiles, the Patriots are certainly intended to repulse a potential missile attack by Russia.

It is pretty ironic, if not pathetic, that one of the most important stumbling blocks on the way to the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment are innocent American chickens or “Bush legs,” as they call them in Russia. I am not talking, of course, about these pretty little birds but about one of the most powerful U.S. lobbies called the “Chicken Lobby” or “Big Chicken.”   This lobby helps producers sell as much poultry as possible, but as in any trade there are some periodical disputes between the exporters and importers. In normal circumstances, such disputes should be handled through standard commercial negotiation processes. However, “Big Chicken” uses its enormous influence and puts pressure on Congress and the administration to highly politicize this trade and block Russia’s graduation from Jackson-Vanik unless it buys huge poultry volumes.  

As the Russian saying goes, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The United States, as the principal sponsor of the Orange Revolution, has found itself in a predicament. Its status of the only remaining superpower after the fall of communism failed the test of time. The economic crisis, the astronomical national debt and growing unemployment, as well as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, instability in Pakistan, Iran’s nuclear ambition, and the increasing threat of Islamic terrorism are inducing the new Washington Administration to take stock of its resources and opt for a more pragmatic policy.

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the "free world". But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world - Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey - are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.