Stephen Cohen has an excellent, urgent column in the IHT on the topic of McCain and Obama’s totally inadequate and positively harmful Russia policies. I have nothing to add for now that I haven’t said before; Russia is the most important country in the world as far as American foreign policy is concerned. With Russia on our side, all our problems are manageable. With Russia against us, managing our problems becomes impossible.

Obviously Russia isn’t going to become a Stalwart Ally anytime soon. But we don’t need any more of those anyway. We just need a Respectful Friend. And we’re only going to get as we give. This may be annoying, for any number of reasons, but the rewards are immeasurable.

And I’m just stupid enough to think that the Russians would actually prefer this, too — so much so that if we recalibrated our policy accordingly, they wouldn’t double-cross us.