INTERNATIONAL: "A Northern Neighbor Growls, and Azerbaijan Reassesses Its Options," by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 23 October 2008.

The dance gets trickier for Baku, but not really any different: courting the West but not in any formal way that will bring Moscow's displeasure.

So yeah, given few to no alternatives, Azerbaijan takes up Gazprom's offer to buy its natural gas and pipe it westward, possibly killing the planned Nabucco pipeline.

As one Azeri political commentator in Baku put it realistically: "You can't have a foreign policy that goes against your geography. We have to get along with the Russians and the Iranians."

So Baku also accepts Moscow's offer to mediate on Nagorno-Karabakh, and we see the enduring political realities of the so-called near abroad.