Europe and the U.S.Is this something we should fear

We can quote Putin on the tragic loss of the U.S.S.R., and if I can dig up my list of Putinisms on Rosetta Stone Language my puter's hard drive, you'll get a taste of his Soviet nostalgia and gutter humor. But Putin is, above all, a realist. He never promises more than he can deliver, as his former friends in the U.S. State Department used to say. And although he has a knack of being out of town when bad stuff goes down, he rarely hides his intentions.Putin rose to power on the back of the second Chechen war, arguably the most brutal onslaught in Europe since World War II (the arguable part is the question of geography, not bloodshed). Now, hear me well, Michael, I'm no Putin apologist, as my books and writings on his regime make plain. But what Putin wants, ultimately, in that icy heart of his is for Russia to join what he and his patriots longingly call "the civilized world" -- shorthand for the non-Slavic nations that boast strong cultural traditions, enduring institutions and economies that don't collapse overnight. In other words, Europe and the U.S.Is this something we should fear? Especially at a time when NATO no longer has the guts to walk the talk of its own charter?Andrew Meier is a former Moscow correspondent for Time magazine and the author of the new book, "The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service."Deal cautiously with RussiaCounterpoint: Michael C. MoynihanAndrew, you provide a succinct -- and much needed -- recapitulation of Russia's Yeltsin-era economic crises. In attempting to contextualize the political situation in Russia, countless pundits and Language Learning Software Kremlin watchers have employed the word "humiliation" to portray a country desperate to reassert its power after the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the violent gangsterism and crony capitalism of the 1990s. Russia has been humiliated, and now it is having its revenge. And although it is true that opinion polls in the region show alarming levels of nostalgia for the Soviet Union, it seems rather more likely that seven years of economic growth (buoyed by high oil prices) and a rising middle class do more to explain the popularity of Putin's brand of authoritarian democracy and aggressive foreign policy.This has doubtless put Russia in a better position to reassert control in its own backyard (which, during the Cold War, included the Middle East and Africa), as we have already seen during the second Chechen war, the Ukrainian election of 2004 and now the invasion of Georgia. And as countless mentators have noted, there is a distinct feeling of deja vu among Kremlinologists, though the current situation in Georgia is, contra Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in no way analogous to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979.It is perhaps an obvious point, but one that bears repeating: Russian hegemony in 1979 included direct control over Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, the Baltics and indirect control over other "fraternal" socialist movements, allies and guerrillas in Nicaragua, Cuba, South Yemen, Syria and Angola. So if by Russian "hegemony" we are using the recent Soviet past as a point of parison, I would argue that we are in a less urgent situation.Whether all of this would have happened had Georgia already been a NATO member is an interesting French Learning Software counterfactual and raises a question about one of your key points, Andrew. You say that Putin is a realist (agreed) and that he desires inclusion in the West.