As I mentioned in my previous post, energy competition would be a fundamental backbone for our ongoing relations with Russia.  This piece highlighting a new military technology cooperation agreement between Russia and no less than Saudi Arabia reinforces the point.  Note at the end of the piece the reference to the positive aspect that Russia, depsite their natural resource endowments are not currently a member of OPEC and that there may be divergent interests between them. 

This must be exploited.  If Russia gets too close with OPEC and is able to work in any way towards coordinating energy prices, this could be a problem.  I still think we need to evaluate how far we tread into Russia's territory.  I support things like missle defense, but am more skeptical of ongoing NATO expansion to former members of the Soviet Union like Georgia and Ukraine.  I understand the ideological underpinnings of this effort and the desire to anchor those nations in the "West."  But we need Russian cooperation more than we need cooperation with those nations.  Clearly, we should draw some redlines with the Russians (we can't just let them militarily annex territories like Abkhazzia in Georgia).  Yet, this need for cooperation with Russia is just a simple fact of geopolitics.   We are going to need to work more collaboratively as we regain strength in the wake of Iraq and the War on Terror.  That doesn't just mean with Europeans who supposedly share our values (which is only partly true as our respective visions of reality are different), but with those we don't necessarily feel as much affinity for.

If I sound like a "Realist", its because, for the moment, realism is the order of the day.  I have posted many times that the consequences of a bad outcome in Iraq would be quite distasteful to those who like to think in idealistic terms.  Iraq was a test of a nobility and an idealism that our military has, but I am not convinced the population at large has the same idealism when it comes to these operations.  Incremental idealism is the best we can hope for under present constraints.  The first step to enshrining that is to not poke the Russian bear needlessly.