Russia, says the Guardian, is opting for a charm offensive to try to see off the deployment of sophisticated US missile defence systems in Poland and Czech Republic.
It did not take long for the Obama team to encounter the complexities of Poland and points East:
President-elect Obama has spoken to the president of Poland about relations between the two countries but didn’t make a commitment on the multibillion-dollar missile defense program undertaken by the Bush administration, an Obama aide said Saturday.
That contrasts with a statement by Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who said Obama told him the missile defense project would continue.
This one will drag on.
The Obama team can be expected to be leery of a Bush Administration commitment to this system until they get into office and have some heavy briefings on what the point of it all is.
The Russian leadership are in a (for them) comfortable position.
Either the deployment goes ahead, in which case they can ‘respond’ by putting some missiles of their own in Kaliningrad to make the EU nervous, while quietly whipping up some anti-American protests in Poland and Czech Republic and anywhere else they can find.
Or perhaps the Obama Administration lets it drift into the long grass by examining in no particular hurry its ‘workability’.
In which case the Russians can enjoy reminding the Poles that they have made a fool of themselves by getting so close to Washington on this one; that Washington is listening to Moscow rather than Warsaw and so becoming a lot more ‘realistic’; and that Poland has been left looking … weak.
What game is President Obama going to play – and be good at?
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