Great shame?

At last week's Munich Security Conference American Vice-President Joe Biden spoke of NATO's often strained relationship with Russia, highlighting common concerns - in Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation - where they could work together, but also warning "we will not agree with Russia on everything".

We will not recognize a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.

Earlier today the Kyrgyzstan parliament voted to close the last remaining US base in Central Asia - with full Russian support. Meanwhile new supply routes through the region are being formulated - but again only at the sufferance of Moscow. The latest installment of the 'Great Game' in Central Asia isn't being won by any of the current combatants at all. Instead, one of the most important lasting effects of the NATO mission may well be the tacit American acknowledgement of reestablished Russian hegemony in the region.

Spheres of influence have a bad reputation: the abandonment of half of Europe to the Soviet empire was one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century. But they are only pernicious when they are involuntary. The crucial line of Mr Biden's quoted above was not his guff about spheres of influence, but his point that sovereign states should be free to choose their friends. Since the second world war, Western Europe has been within an American military sphere of influence; since the end of the Cold War, much of Eastern Europe has been within a Western European economic one. Today, Russian attempts to subvert the governments of the Baltics or Georgia should be resisted, because as sovereign states they are free to reject such influence and are largely chosing to do so. But by precisely the same reasoning NATO will recognise a Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia, because the governments of the region have entered into one of their own volition. These governments include among their ranks some of the least democratic regimes on earth, but without the acute humanitarian disaster that could justify a liberal intervention, they are the governments that the Open World will have to deal with. That they want to reject an American military presence is, perhaps, to be lamented, and will constrain NATO attempts to secure Afghanistan further. But this is one Russian sphere of influence that America is going to have to - and indeed should - accept for now.