Russia and its discontents

RUSSIA'S response to the election of Barack Obama came in an address Wednesday to Russian legislators by Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor, President Dmitry Medvedev - a discourse truffled with threats and allegations. If he is wise, Obama will resist the temptation to respond to the Russian rant. He should keep his own counsel because he is not yet president, because Medvedev was playing to a domestic audience, and because anything Obama might say now could complicate the task of undoing the unnecessary knots President Bush has tied in US-Russian relations.

Medvedev threatened to station missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, near Poland, if the United States went ahead with Bush's plans to install a defective missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. He attributed the August war with Georgia to the "arrogant course of the American administration." And for good measure, he blamed America for Russia's market collapse and drastic capital flight, saying, "a local emergency on the US domestic market" was the cause of declining financial markets worldwide.

Once in office, Obama will have to reconstruct US-Russian relations. He could start by accepting at face value Medvedev's statement that Russia has "no innate anti-Americanism." Obama should be ready to cancel deployment of the faulty missile defense system in Central Europe, end the US push for imminent NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia, and heed Russian views on issues such as the independence of Kosovo.

In return, Obama can demand Russian cooperation on energy security, Iran's nuclear program, and terrorism. Putin and Medvedev will not need to be educated in the virtues of such deal-making.