Back in mid-October, Samuel Charap and Andrew Kuchins published a thoughtful op/ed piece in the International Herald Tribune entitled “Russia’s Peace Offensive,” which argued that there were signs that Dmitry Medvedev was striving for a more cooperative tone during his speech at Evian, signaling the beginning of a campaign to thaw the recent freeze in relations with the West. Perhaps somewhat preemptively, the authors conclude “Now that the Russians have apparently realized that their national interests lie in greater cooperation, and not confrontation, with the West, it is time to reach out to the Russians.” I have some nitpicking problems with this breezy reasoning about what Russia realizes and doesn’t realize, but Charap and Kuchins were certainly right about one thing: the Kremlin would very much like to play good cop for a while to ease the reputational damage caused by the war in Georgia and pay down their yawning legitimacy deficit, which has grown extremely painful during the crushing economic crisis.