Their government has clearly decided to reassert themselves on the world stage. Last year, they turned off the natural gas they supply to northern Europe in the winter. That didn't get a whole lot of press. Then they invaded Georgia. They wanted Georgia like a hole in the head. What they did want was to find out what would happen when they "stared down" the U.S., the EU and the UN. They won. There were statements of indignation, but no one did a thing other than pontificate. It's fair for the Russians to conclude that's all that might happen when they do something even more egregious to expand their influence.

Russia wants to provide some "thinking points" to the European countries so dependent on them when it comes to aligning with the U.S. on NATO or in the U.N. They've now turned off the gas to northern Europe again this year. In fact, I think it's "off' as I write this. They've got millions of people in northern Europe cutting wood to heat their houses and cook. Schools and businesses are closed. Russia is sending a clear and unmistakable message to those countries suggesting who they ought to be "friends with" -- and it's clearly not the U.S.A. Now their aggressiveness with regard to the Arctic. If the Russians actually do something in the Arctic and we stand by and expect Norway, Greenland, Canada and the bankrupt Iceland to do anything about it, we'll lose even more influence and power. It's not a pretty picture. We have a few other things higher on our national agenda right now, and the Russians know it.

It's pretty clear that Russia intends to re-assert itself as a world power, a position it hasn't held since the end of the Cold War almost twenty years ago. As they always have, they're conducting their foreign policy in a tough, aggressive manner. We used to call it the "Russian-style" of negotiating--with a clear winner and a clear loser, with the winner happy and the loser feeling nothing but defeat. There's no attempt to reach a consensus solution with the Russians. Their actions are filling an almost complete void of U.S. diplomacy that's existed throughout the Bush administration. Other than arm-twisting to get some "allies" to provide soldiers to fight the war in Iraq, we've done next to nothing on the diplomatic front to expand our influence and strengthen our diplomatic relationships. e posted political hacks as ambassadors to important countries and had a Secretary of State who while smart, was totally toothless in the execution of our foreign policy. It's probably fair to say that our relationships have actually been weakened in recent years as the result of our inclination to charge ahead doing what we want, not seeking or completely ignoring the desires and opinions of other countries.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton, along with the Congress, are going to have to get the U.S. diplomatic strategies in order and crank up our own diplomatic efforts pretty quickly if we expect to counter the new Russian diplomatic strategy as well as others. Lots of countries see the opportunity to become rising world powers -- China, India, Russia and Brazil among them. We're still the only super power, but we're losing position fast. It looks like the new administration is beginning to get organized from a foreign policy point-of-view, but the question is: might it be too little too late?