KEY POINTS:
Amid all the justified light-headedness and hosannahs to democracy that greeted Barack Obama's victory last week, some chilly, undemocratic calculations were spinning in a very different part of the world.
In the race to be first to challenge the newly minted President-elect, Moscow is already out of the
blocks.
The Kremlin chose Obama's first morning as President-elect as the perfect time to announce it planned to station short-range surface-to-surface missiles on land bordering Poland and Lithuania.
The threatened deployment on Nato's borders - for the first time since the Cold War - is in retaliation for the missile defence shield that the Bush Administration wants in Europe by 2011.
Russia further blew cold air on America's champagne bubbles with the news that the country's constitution will shortly be amended to allow for a six-year presidential term. And, Vedomosti reports, moves are afoot for Dmitry Medvedev to resign next year, raising the very real prospect of 12 more years of Vladimir Putin as President.
In other words, the puppet theatre that analysts predicted when Putin moved from the presidency to the Prime Minister's chair has become clearer.
Having served two four-year terms, Putin opted for a sideways shift while pulling strings from the shadows. His front man, shooed-in with an orchestrated May vote that international observers were not allowed to monitor, may soon be discarded.
Russia shook the United States and Western Europe in August when it took advantage of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's impetuosity and US President George W. Bush's lame-duck status to trample on its neighbour.
Its clear message to the incoming Obama team is that it won't let up in aggressively defending its corner. And as the Georgia conflict showed, there are few options available to the US and its allies in dealing with a major power of significant military and energy strength, feeling threatened in what it considers its sphere of influence.
Russian politicians have also used anti-Western rhetoric to build support at the domestic level.
Columbia University's Professor Stephen Sestanovich, a former adviser to President Clinton and now Obama adviser, in a piece for Foreign Affairs, says, "The most significant obstacle [the new administration] will face ... is the fact that Russia's leaders have gone a long way toward reconceiving the relationship [with the US]. In their view, common interests and strategic compatibility are no longer at its core."
At the centre of the new administration's quest for a more co-operative relationship will be resolving the dispute over the missile shield.
Obama has been sceptical about its cost and workability. A spokesman said yesterday that Obama has made "no commitment" to it. "His position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defence system when the technology is proved to be workable."
The Russian relationship is just one background issue for Obama as the US moves through an unsettling period of transition, buffeted by the financial crisis, two wars and unresolved anxieties over Iran's nuclear programme.
The President-elect has to organise his policies and troops before inauguration on January 20 while being careful not to undermine President Bush.
Obama's focus has so far been on the economy, with the naming of an economic advisory board on Saturday. He has promised to move forward with "deliberate haste". The financial markets are hoping for the early naming of a treasury secretary.
But, as Russia's moves must remind him, secretary of state will be just as crucial. Names mentioned include:
* Senator John Kerry, who will chair the Senate foreign relations committee if he is not picked.
* Richard Holbrooke, a senior diplomat from the Clinton Administration, who would have been a sitter for the job had Senator Hillary Clinton won the nomination and the election.
* New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who worked for President Clinton as energy secretary and UN ambassador.
* Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who was a major critic of the Iraq war and went with Obama on his campaign foreign trip. He may be considered a better fit for the Pentagon.
Other possibilities at State/Defence: Senator Jack Reed also travelled with Obama and Hagel. Obama has expressed admiration for Republican Senator Dick Lugar, former Georgia senator Sam Nunn and former Nato Supreme Commander General Jim Jones.
The fact that Obama begins with his plate overloaded with economic problems - requiring a great deal of his attention - means he needs a particularly effective, widely experienced, James Baker-style arm-twister at State.
That would suggest Holbrooke, the tough negotiator who resolved the Bosnia War with the Dayton Accord and who served as Assistant Secretary of State in both Europe and Asia.
But the question is how much will loyalty play in Obama's decision?
Kerry gave Obama his big break - a key speaking role at the 2004 Democratic convention. During the primary race, Kerry supported Obama early, Richardson took a lot of heat from Clintonistas for backing Obama and Holbrooke was loyal to the Clintons.
Baker tells Newsweek a good relationship is important: "Everybody in Washington wants to get a piece of the foreign-policy turf, so it's imperative that there be an understanding between you and the president ... You need to be the president's person at the State Department, and not the State Department's person at the White House."
Whoever Obama goes for, foreign affairs is unlikely to be the haunt of untried fresh faces.
