DMITRY Medvedev, the Russian president, looks to have committed a strategic blunder by sending Barack Obama a message on his election day threatening the deployment of nuclear missiles to Kaliningrad.
On an occasion, when even America's twin nemeses, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, sent telegrams of good wishes, Mr Medvedev's act stood out.
The US defence secretary, Bill Gates, who is likely to be re- employed by the O
bama administration, has slammed the plan as "provocative, unnecessary and misguided" and "hardly the welcome a new American administration deserves".
Both sides of Congress already view Russia as a foe rather than a partner, remembering the decision to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in mid-winter and last summer's invasion of Georgia.
And the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, this week added his own criticism saying : "It is not a good idea to speak about missiles in Kaliningrad. We don't need a new Cold War."
Mr Medvedev has since tried to back-track on the issue, insisting the Iskander-M tactical nuclear missiles would only be deployed if the US set up its planned anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland.
Washington's problem with its anti-missile system had been reluctance in the capitals of Western Europe to support the plan, despite American insistence that it wants to target "rogue" missiles from Iran or North Korea.
But US officials can now point to the Kaliningrad threat as evidence of a Russia that cannot be trusted.
The truth is that the Obama administration, facing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the nuclear ambitions of Iran has assigned Russia a low priority.
And with falling oil and gas prices and a collapsing Russian stock market, Moscow has found that it now needs the West more than the West needs Moscow.
