“When Obama looks at the chessboard, the key emerging challenge remains Russia.”

This presupposes that Russia is challenging any US interest. But America’s interests in the Caucausus are merely to challenge Russia for the sake of doing so. Thus the US supported Goergia’s attempted genocide in Ossetia purely to have Georgia as a piece in play & is now doing the same in Turkey Russia may be a rising economic power, though not as fast as China but it is not challenging any US or indeed European interest – they are too keen to sell gas to us.

Such actions may persuade it to.