At a most inopportune time, the Balkans are back. On Dec. 10, the U.S.-E.U.-Russian negotiating team tasked with getting the Serbs and Albanians to agree on Kosovo's future status will report to the United Nations that it has failed. A few weeks later Kosovo's government will proclaim that Kosovo is an independent nation -- a long overdue event. The United States and most of the European Union (led by Britain, France and Germany) will recognize Kosovo quickly. Russia and its allies will not. Kosovo's eight-year run as the biggest-ever UN project will end with great tension and a threat of violence that could spread to Bosnia. Because security in Kosovo is NATO's responsibility, there is an urgent need to beef up the NATO presence before this diplomatic train wreck. Just the thought of sending additional American troops into the region must horrify the Bush administration. Yet its hesitations and neglect helped create this dilemma -- which Russia has exploited.

International observers made their decisions about Russia's Duma election yesterday: all organizations will send missions to Russia, except the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR). The opposition can only rely on its own observers, based on the assumption that the presence of foreign experts won't make the campaign any more free or fair. Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Chairman Vladimir Churov announced yesterday that the Duma election will be monitored by observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly.

Creating a new stability, based not only on the personality of Vladimir Putin, but also on institutions, is one of the chief priorities of the political system's development. The institution of the presidency and the related institution of the Cabinet of Ministers have grown much stronger in recent years. Other institutions, however, are still quite weak. These institutions are being created and reinforced in several areas. Above all, the political parties must be strengthened. To this end, new election laws have been passed to help a few leading parties gain a stronger position in the political system and become genuine parties, capable of setting policy-planning objectives for national development and of selecting and training personnel for government agencies. This increasing strength is most evident in United Russia, but the influence of the CPRF is also increasing visibly.

It looks like some U.S. media and pundits feel that America’s list of enemies and foreign policy problems is boringly short and needs to be expanded.   Forget about the second coming of the battle-hardened al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, the Iraq quagmire where even supposedly loyal Kurds start messing things up, Iran with its nuclear ambitions, or nuclear Pakistan going through the most dangerous upheaval. The list of other U.S. foreign and domestic problems can be largely extended by any serious expert, but for some folks all this is just not enough. Instead of discussing ways to face the enormous challenges confronting the United States and trying to find an ally or two who can help us, they raise their influential voices demanding to expand America’s enemy list by adding a now resurgent Russia to it. There are many critical voices in America about Russia’s behavior both at home and abroad, and some of their arguments are hard to dispute. Russia today is certainly not a beacon of democracy, nor is it always supportive of U.S. foreign policy objectives. But is it really so bad that we have to call it the “enemy”?   Is it helpful to our security if we place a nuclear superpower on the U.S. enemies list?

A partial, immediate and reasonable enough answer is that "everybody else" does already. No small detail, those direct conversations, involving allies like France, are producing zero results in getting Iran to back off from its drive toward nuclear weapons, according to a European who follows the exchanges in detail. Another, equally plausible aspect to the response: An American sit-down with the Iranians wouldn't make tactical sense until additional sanctions against the mullahs reach a much more intense level.

During his visit to Krasnoyarsk, Vladimir Putin not only called United Russia not the ideal political structure but even admitted that leading this party's lists will entail "costs," including for him personally. NG (Nezavisimaya Gazeta) asked leading political analysts to explain precisely what kind of losses the president was talking about.

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who visited Moscow this week, thinks that Moscow and Washington have entered a "new phase of negotiations" and are undertaking efforts to strengthen relations. That may be. However, no compromise in relations between the two countries is in sight. For example, in terms of its quantitative and qualitative parameters the US missile defense system in Eastern Europe is not capable of threatening Russia's nuclear deterrence forces. But it is not needed against Iran because that country will never be able to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. And even if it could, its leaders are not so insane that they would deliver a suicidal strike against US territory. Therefore, from a rational point of view, it is absolutely impossible to understand either the reasons for the Russian hysterics about missile defense or the reasons for America to build this system. We are looking at a double absurdity.

Last week’s declared state of emergency in Georgia came as a shock. The Rose Revolution’s democratic experiment in this small but strategically vital country seemed to dissolve in clouds of tear gas. Peaceful demonstrations escalated into violence and calls for the overthrow of the government.

A plethora of anniversaries is arriving in Russia. This month marks the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 and the 25th anniversary of the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Next month will see the 15th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s disintegration. Only by understanding that first event, however, can we understand the others. The October Revolution has always had many critics. The Russian philosopher Ivan Shmelev named it “the great beating of Russia.” Vasily Rozanov called it “The Massacre of Russia.” Countless authors view it as a tragedy that broke the flow of history and destroyed Russia’s best people. But the October Revolution also has its apologists, for whom it marked the beginning of a new era in history, a breakthrough to freedom from a world of slavery and oppression, a salvation for Russia and Europe, and a source of hope for Asia and Africa. According to this view, there was no conspiracy, but a great social revolution that, by virtue of a powerful internal logic, brought to power workers, peasants, and the Bolshevik party, which represented their will.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given a detailed assessment of Russian-American relations, with predictions about how they will develop. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Rice said that the greatest challenge Russia poses to the outside
world is its energy policy. When asked to comment on the consequences of Russia's growing closeness to China, Rice replied diplomatically that she doesn't share recently-expressed opinions about the great potential of a Russia-China axis. She indicated that China and Russia have bilateral problems and differences, and made it clear that even outside the link with China, Moscow poses a substantial challenge to Washington.