Little wonder then that there is so much confusion about what to do. All four players, to varying degrees, are in a state of "strategic shock." With the election last December of reformist president Viktor Yushchenko, a matter of seismic geo-political importance has been thrust onto the political agenda.

Of all of the above-mentioned players, NATO has the clearest position, while in many ways simultaneously presenting itself as the most sensitive issue to be overcome. Its "open door" policy - which offers the theoretical possibility of membership to any country that meets the entry conditions - remains precisely that. Ukraine, in principle, is a potential candidate.

In practice, though, things will be somewhat more complicated. Russian nationalists are nothing short of incensed at the thought that the biggest of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union could cut loose completely from Russia's sphere of influence and throw in its lot with the West. The Kremlin, which badly miscalculated by backing pro-Moscow candidate Viktor Yanukovych in last year's elections, is unlikely to be much more sympathetic.

In Ukraine itself, opinions divide sharply between pro-Moscow Russian speakers in the east and south and pro-Western Ukrainian speakers in the center and west.

Officials associated with the new administration in Kiev are becoming more and more vocal in pushing the case for NATO membership. But they are acutely aware of the domestic divisions they will have to overcome to achieve it.

For its part, the European Union is simply confused -- as it is about whether to offer Ukraine the prospect of membership inside its own structures. But diplomats from key power centers such as Paris and Berlin are known to be deeply concerned about undermining their relationship with Moscow. They are unlikely to be in the vanguard of moves to get Ukraine a place at the NATO table.

In short, the complexities are vast and no one but a fool would be prepared to offer a confident prediction of what happens next.

However, some historical perspective from central and eastern Europe over the last decade or so may at least give us some clues as to how things might pan out.

The fate of the Baltic States, which joined both NATO and the European Union last year, provides a model for integration reformists in Ukraine would dearly like to emulate. As former Estonian foreign minister Toomas Ilves put it at a conference in Kiev last month: "Now that NATO has moved up to the Russian border, we've crossed the red line." The Baltic states, too, were constituent republics of the Soviet Union. If Russia could stomach their accession to NATO, why not Ukraine?

A red line has indeed been crossed, but skeptics could be forgiven for believing Ukraine may be different. For one thing, Ukraine was part of Russia's sphere of influence for centuries. It occupies an important place in the Russian nationalist consciousness.

The tiny Baltic states, by contrast, were always hostile to rule from Moscow, and were incorporated into the Soviet Union only amid the upheavals of World War II and its aftermath. There are also other problems such as Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which operates off Ukrainian territory in the Crimea. This issue will need to be resolved before NATO can move forward decisively on Ukraine.

Hope, however, comes from the biggest player of all -- which, of course, is not in Europe. America is the only country in the West with the clout to face down Russian objections. Moreover, and unlike Paris and Berlin, Washington has a track record in its dealings with the former communist world of seeing matters from outside the prism of Moscow.

While west European countries hesitated about how to handle central and eastern Europe in the 1990s for fear of upsetting the Russians, America provided a powerful impetus to making those countries part of the West. If President Bush means what he says in making the forward march of freedom the centerpiece of his second term in office, Ukrainian reformists may have cause for optimism.

The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is NATO itself. As one senior NATO official recently told me on condition of anonymity: "Ukrainians need to understand that there is a transformed NATO out there." There was the NATO of the Cold War, implacably positioned in opposition to the threat from Moscow.

There was the NATO of the 1990s, tentatively repositioning itself and offering an olive branch to a post-communist Russia that was no longer seen as necessarily hostile to western interests. Now there is the NATO of the post-9/11 world, rapidly reinventing itself as a combatant in the global war on terror. Ukraine will have to show NATO how it can contribute to the organization it is now becoming. Membership is a two-way process.

Pulling all these strands together, some things do, after all, seem clear. The first is that NATO will not simply absorb Ukraine by osmosis. It will require a major effort of political will on the part of NATO and its constituent members and also from within Ukraine if the prospects for integration are ever to be realized in practice.

The second is that careful diplomatic initiatives toward Moscow will also need to be combined with a shift in strategic thinking about the role of Russia in Europe. While doing their best not to enflame sensitivities in Moscow, Ukraine and the West will need to make it clear that Russia has no veto over the strategic direction of any European nation, Ukraine included.

The core of the problem is that if Ukraine does join NATO, many of the outstanding questions of the post-Cold War era will need to be resolved first: What is NATO for? What is Russia about these days? How European does the European Union wish to become? And where is Ukraine really capable of positioning itself in the midst of all this?

The stakes are high for all concerned.

Robin Shepherd is an adjunct fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His column appears weekly.

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