The accession of the two Black Sea states to the Atlantic alliance was part of the same U.S.-led strategic plan that went up in smoke as soon as Russian troops entered Georgia on Aug. 8 in response to a Georgian incursion against the Russian-supported secessionist enclave of South Ossetia.

It is no coincidence, indeed, that tensions within the pro-Western bloc in Ukraine itself exploded just after the Ossetian conflict. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has accused his own prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, of treason for trying to curry support in Moscow for her own presidential ambitions to succeed him.

In a startlingly Soviet-style reflex, the pro-Western and American-encouraged Yushchenko announced that he will set his secret services loose on her. Tymoshenko denies the charges, of course, but she no doubt has concluded, like many Ukrainians, that her vast and mainly Russian-speaking country can in fact never be part of an American-led military alliance whose nuclear missiles are directed against fellow Russians within the Russian Federation itself.

This is a historic turning point. Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, the West has expanded its influence ever deeper into former Soviet territory encompassing first all the Central European nations of the former Warsaw Pact and then further, welcoming the three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the NATO alliance. The Caucasus was one focal point for this expansion because of the oil pipelines bringing oil from the Caspian Basin to the Western nations.

However, the situation has now dramatically changed because of the brief Georgian conflict. Russian troops are now within an hour's drive of that pipeline, and there is nothing the West can do about it. It is also doubtful, incidentally, whether the famous missile shield, which Russian leaders rightly interpret as an anti-Russian project, can ever actually work.

The project of NATO expansion having now been arrested, perhaps forever, the aim of creating a unipolar world around the worldwide projection of American power is now a thing of the past.

Of course, all this was foreseen long ago -- in song, and by a Georgian. The venerable NATO is now like Bulat Okudzhava's famous soldier: "He wanted to transform the world so that everyone would be happy. But he only hung by a thread for, you see, he was in fact made out of paper."

(John Laughland is a British historian and political analyst, and director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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