For anyone in need of advanced evidence of how disorganized America’s foreign policy towards Russia will likely be over the coming years, there is this priceless gem about former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s recent trips to Moscow at the request of the Obama administration as an unlikely envoy in nuclear non-proliferation talks. As National Security Advisor to President Nixon, of course, it was Kissinger’s advocacy of détente that helped relax U.S./Soviet relations – but in more recent times, these Cold War visions of Russia have taken on a distorted sense of false realism (at least right up until the war with Georgia, when Mr. Kissinger suddenly went on radio silence).

The irony of the two nations’ post-Cold War quagmire is that realpolitk is again very much in vogue.  No matter how many human rights atrocities make the news out of Moscow this year (already people are forgetting about Markelov), the Obama administration has already made overwhelmingly clear its need for amiability in U.S./Russia relations, what with all the old nukes still floating around, the Iran question, the broadening Kyrgyzstan base imbroglio and related issue of Central Asian militarization, and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that “mutually assured destruction,” the logic behind dueling arsenals, is an increasingly irrelevant relic in an era of preemptive strike capabilities and stateless nuclear terrorism.

All of which is to say, Vice President Joseph Biden’s speech tomorrow at the Munich Security Conference, which promises to clarify Obama’s Russia strategy, likely through the prism of nuclear disarmament, will probably reflect enough contradictions to keep everyone guessing.