Strobe Talbott, who hasn’t been writing as much about Russia since fending off allegations made in spy’s memoir, has a new piece in the Financial Times which makes a Kissinger-esque argument for the growing area mutual interests and potential for cooperation between Russia and the United States.  The subtext of the argument is that Washington should back off any tough demands on democratic norms, rule of law, or human rights, and give up some ground on “troublesome” issues such as the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.  About 75% of the article is dedicated to proving that Russia is harmless, friendless, and surrounded.

We expect to see these kinds of arguments about U.S.-Russia relations to become quite fashionable in the near term.

From the FT:

So in a very real sense, the political (as opposed to the geographic) “west” has Russia surrounded. That is a fact – and a formulation – that makes many Russians nervous, or worse, since “encirclement” is the English version of the word that they use for “containment”. But what is called for is emphatically not the cold war strategy based on a global chain of military alliances aimed at deterring or, if necessary, defeating Soviet expansionism. Of those pacts, only Nato survives precisely because it has – whatever the Russians may fear and say – taken on a post-cold war identity and mission.