President-elect Barack Obama "needs a new approach to Russia," said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, "if we want to avoid a new cold war." One necessary change is for us to "get over our crush" on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. His country was "mauled by the bear in the brief August war," but Georgia under Saakashvili "isn't quite the shining beacon of democracy that Americans sometimes believe."
The tricky thing for Obama is figuring out how to handle Russia's "official president, Dmitry Medvedev," said Garry Kasparov in The Wall Street Journal, and its real leader, Vladimir Putin. "Obama can treat them like fellow democratic leaders or like the would-be dictators that they are." His decision will say plenty about "how seriously he takes his promises of change."
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