Russia’s annexation of Crimea illustrates the rebalancing of European and Asian powers around the rising ambition of President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

The 20th century, dominated by mass murder in Central Europe and East Asia, was known as the American Century. The 21st century, by contrast, now looks to be the Eurasian Century. American power is in eclipse. Leaders in Washington don’t like this, and the political actors of both parties are in a frenzy of finger-pointing, but they can do little more than complain bitterly and watch silently, like a bystander to history.

Moscow is in command of the time and place for rebalancing the Great Powers, a construction that was ruined by what is regarded in Moscow as a European Hundred Years' War, 1848 to 1948. In the course of that century of battles, the traditional power blocs were Western Europe, Middle Europe and Eastern Europe. From Moscow’s perspective, the Cold War, 1946–91, was an aberration. It temporarily and awkwardly divided Europe into the American sphere of NATO and the Russian sphere of the Warsaw Pact.

The current rebalancing started with the jettisoning of the defunct Soviet ideology and the establishment of Russia as the energy superpower on which both Europeans and Asians must depend. Russian-controlled pipelines are the most straightforward explanation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s acceptance of the Common Eurasian Home theme that Putin advances in each conversation. France’s President François Hollande and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron look reluctant to reverse the geopolitical trend that working relations with Moscow, not Washington, are vital for continued EU prosperity. As evidence that Hollande’s and Cameron’s barks at the recent G-7 meeting in Europe are bigger than their bites, consider that France hesitates to cancel warship sales to Russia just as Britain hesitates to move against the real estate and banking advantages in London for Russian oligarchs.

President Barack Obama appeared to acknowledge the European reluctance in his remarks to NATO in Brussels: “The situation in Ukraine, like crises in many parts of the world, does not have easy answers nor a military solution.”

The Ukrainian crisis was provoked, in the Kremlin’s opinion, thanks to ham-fisted intervention by NGO cutouts (George Soros is prominently mentioned) in league with the Obama administration’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Moscow does not believe there was anything inevitable about Ukraine’s failures. Viktor Yanukovich’s panicky flight from Kiev then forced Moscow’s hand to secure its interests. Crimea is the first of what will be several logical moves to reintegrate ethnic Russians into the Russian Federation.