MOSCOW – In 1970, Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik observed in Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? that “all totalitarian regimes grow old without realizing it.” Amalrik was right, and the regime established since 2000 by Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to fall apart – perhaps this year – for the same reason that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

NEW YORK – The global economy this year will exhibit some similarities with the conditions that prevailed in 2012. No surprise there: we face another year in which global growth will average about 3%, but with a multi-speed recovery – a sub-par, below-trend annual rate of 1% in the advanced economies, and close-to-trend rates of 5% in emerging markets. But there will be some important differences as well.

PARIS – While hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Paris against the right of homosexual couples to marry and adopt children, French troops were arriving in Mali to stop a coalition of Islamist and rebel forces from taking control of its capital, Bamako, and creating in the Sahel a sanctuary for terrorists.

BRUSSELS – At high-level gatherings of the European Union elite, one often hears the following type of statement: “Europe must integrate and centralize economic governance in order to defend its social model in an age of globalization.” European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and his counterpart at the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, are particularly keen on this argument.

In 1966, Charles de Gaulle’s vision of a Europe “that stretched from the Atlantic to the Urals” was provocative. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has advanced an even more ambitious goal: “a common market stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

From the Baltics to the Mediterranean, Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP) has long been the dominant supplier of natural gas to heat homes, run factories, and generate electricity. Even if its European customers grumbled about high prices, they didn’t do it too loudly: Gazprom could cut them off, as Ukraine learned during its price disputes with the company between 2005 and 2010.

For weeks, the eyes of the world have been on Spain. Ever since the European Central Bank announced its Outright Market Transactions program, Madrid has kept the markets guessing over whether it will request aid from the euro zone's bailout funds, paving the way for the ECB to start buying its bonds. The market suspects an ill-tempered standoff between a stubborn Spanish government and its euro-zone partners. Anxiety last week spilled over into the market with Spanish bond yields rising sharply and stock markets selling off. But the reality is more complex. At the heart of the Spanish impasse lies a wider political dispute that goes to the heart of the euro crisis—and the main protagonists in this debate are Germany and Italy. How this disagreement is resolved will shape the future of the single currency.

BERLIN – In the coming months, several serious regional economic and political crises could combine into one mega-watershed, fueling an intense global upheaval. In the course of the summer, the prospect of a perilous fall has become only more likely.

In a SPIEGEL interview, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti says Europe is showing traces of a "psychological dissolution" in the debt crisis and that leaders are doing too little to stop it. He also warns that governments cannot allow themselves to become "fully bound" to parliament in determining policies to save the euro.

Europe is experiencing its worst major economic and political crisis since World War II, says CFR Europe expert Charles A. Kupchan.