Disappointed!
By Russia appears to be displeased about the missile defense deal with Poland:
Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations with the United States that have already been strained severely in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close American ally. At a news conference on Friday, a senior Russian defense official, Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, suggested that Poland was making itself a target by agreeing to serve as host for the anti-missile system. Such an action “cannot go unpunished,” he said.
In apparent response (although the timing of these things is sometimes hard to tell), the Russians dispatched an armored column down the road to Tblisi, and threatened Poland with nuclear annihilation. While the perturbed Russian response was predictable, I really have to wonder whether, in internal Kremlin discussions, there was any understanding that the military action against Georgia would provoke balancing behavior. In particular, I wonder whether Bill Kristol’s Russian counterpart patiently explained to Putin and Medvedev that the offensive would “change the map of the near abroad” and intimidate Poland into giving up on the missiles. Imperial minded aggressors, after all, very often seem to believe that “the enemy only understands force” and that the wage of assertive action will invariably be meek compliance.
They could have just asked the guy who some are now calling the “Nostradamus of Kentucky”: