At least on one front, President-elect Barack Obama is going to get some help in defusing a looming confrontation with Russia when NATO foreign ministers gather in Brussels in early December.

Signs are that the ministers are going to blunt the quest of the Bush administration to bring the former Soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine into membership in the Western collective defense organization.

That could remove at least one thorn from the paw of the Russian bear, who Washington needs in its struggles with Iran and preventing nuclear terrorism.

Moscow has also announced it's installing missiles near Poland in response to the Bush administration's plan to install anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe.

Georgia's case wasn't helped today by a report that it may have fired first on the breakaway province of South Ossetia last August, precipitating a Russian invasion.  Some 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Tbilisi Friday to protest Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's handling of the war. 

"Ukraine and Georgia were previously anticipated to take the next step toward full NATO membership, attaining Membership Action Plans (MAPs), at an upcoming December NATO Ministerial," writes Kyle Atwell at The Atlantic Review. 

"However, Georgia's conflict with Russia and the destabilizing, perennial internal political squabbles between President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko in Ukraine has made a 2008 MAP for either country all but impossible to imagine."

The White House needs a "Plan B," argues Steven Piper, a former American ambassador to Ukraine.

"Rather than pursuing a quest certain to end in diplomatic failure, Washington needs a Plan B. It should aim to shape a December outcome that sends positive signals to Kyiv and Tbilisi while making clear that NATO does not concede Ukraine or Georgia to Russia's geopolitical orbit."  

As for the missiles, time is Obama's greatest ally -- for the moment. 

"According to military analysts in Moscow, Russia's whole stock of Iskander missiles -- the type Mr. Medvedev is proposing sending to Kaliningrad -- are currently deployed near the Georgian border," the BBC reports.

"Russia is unlikely to move those, so it will need to manufacture new ones and that will be time consuming and expensive."