FP thinks this is the real thing but it's probably too early to count as Obama's first international crisis. I'm thinking it's just Putin getting into position for when the official competition starts. Surface to surface missiles literally on NATO's border. - there's something eeirily familiar about this:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia will deploy missiles in its Baltic Sea territory in response to US missile defense plans. Medvedev said on Wednesday the short-range Iskander missiles will be deployed to the Kaliningrad region which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania. He has not said how many missiles will be deployed or whether they will be fitted with nuclear warheads. He said in a state-of-the-nation speech Wednesday that Russia will also deploy equipment to electronically hamper the operation of prospective US missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The US shield in Europe can block at most a dozen or so missiles. So if Russia really wanted to defeat it, they would fire two dozen missiles. They don't need their missile batteries at the border and they certainly don't need to jam our radars. This isn't about them feeling threatened. It's about them undermining US military capabilities because they can.

Luckily both Obama and the Europeans have plans for answering Putin's challenge. Obama is talking about giving in and dismantling the shield and the Europeans are looking to restart the talks that they suspended after Putin's Georgia landgrab. This is exactly the approach that Carter used to defeat the Soviet Union by 1980. So no worries.

There are Russian ballistic missiles on NATO's borders. The Russian President is recycling old Khrushchev speeches. Russia is territorially expanding into the USSR's old border. Arab leaders are playing Russia and the US off each other. New electoral rules will bring Russia closer to a one party state that may or may not count as democratic.

But the activist left is worried that Obama is going to be tricked by evil neocons into seeing the potential for another Cold War.

References and previously behind the jump...