Guest column: Dominique Moisi

'LET'S engage Russia if we can, but contain it if we must." These two alternatives already defined western strategy toward Russia in the mid-1990s. Since then, Russia may have changed dramatically, but our questions about it have not.

What do you do when your big neighbour widens the gap that exists between its culture, which is European, and its political system, which is increasingly "Asian", at least in the bad old sense of "Oriental despotism"?

Should the best answer to th...