If one nation is totally infuriated by the current bombing of Serbia, it's Russia. After numerous assaults by angry crowds, the imposing building of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Moscow now looks like an expensive piece of furniture despoiled by a wild party, its walls covered with ketchup and ink. It is unclear whether the assailants paid for the ketchup and ink bottles out of their own thin wallets, or whether these weapons were distributed by some generous political mogul. Both may be true: Rank-and-file Muscovites are very angry indeed at the U.S. government, and practically every politician in Russia is happy to capitalize on the crisis in the Balkans.

Why so much rage? In principle, it is bizarre for a nation suffering the most severe economic hardships and political turmoil to pay so much attention to developments abroad that should be of no immediate concern. Indeed, Serbia is separated from Russia by Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine. Any political earthquake in the Balkans will be felt by these nations first; they are cushioning it for Moscow and as a result, Russia's geostrategic situation looks infinitely better than that of Serbia's neighbors.

The easiest (but not necessarily the truest) explanation for Russia's stormy reaction to NATO's bombing is the remnants of the country's imperial shroud, the tidbits of its imperial self-image, the ghost of the superpower status that Russia has lost since the end of the Cold War. Serbia and the Balkans in general had been central to Russia's foreign policy for exactly a century -- between the Napoleonic wars and World War I -- until the empire lost its sphere of influence in the area to Western powers in 1917.