Dmitry Medvedev’s tour of Latin America is certainly making some headlines, but as I mentioned this weekend, there are still some fundamental misunderstandings about Russia’s goals in the region.  However I did see an interesting item in Reuters today, which suggests that Russia may not be the supreme diplomatic operator in the region that so many assume it to be … at least in terms of coming to agreement with the Brazilians on defense deals, France’s Nicholas Sarkozy is unexpectedly outmaneuvring the Russians with better deals (unexpected, because Europe hasn’t politically outmaneuvred Russia in any area for about five years).  We’ll see how it takes for Moscow to learn from this setback, and how much the Brazilians will be able to get out of Gazprom in exchange for access to their new offshore mega-fields (hint: not long).