Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here, kicking off a pretty intense week. Yes, we are talking about Russia once again, with the world on the precipice of major power confrontation in a way that is both more imminent and more dangerous in frankly, anything we've seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union back in 1991. I don't say that lightly.

Fortunately, diplomacy is still happening and as long as diplomacy is still happening, that means President Putin has not made a decision to invade. But having said that, the sides are still pretty far apart. I think essentially what President Biden has been able to accomplish over the last four, six weeks, number one, he has convinced the European allies that the Russians are indeed very serious about a military invasion and that as a consequence, the NATO alliance has to be as solid and as unified as humanly possible and I think that is indeed much more true today than it was a month ago. Diplomacy, as a consequence of that alignment, has a greater likelihood of working. But it also means that if diplomacy fails the level of escalation we are likely to see, both from the US and NATO and then in return in retaliation from the Russians is also much more dangerous.