New Russians

"That is now being carted away into the archives," Trenin says. "If that's done then you're going to have a totally different military organization in this county, one that's focused on small-scale engagement, one that will look progressively more to the south where there will be more military engagements."

Finally, there's Medvedev. Widely thought to be a marionetka Putina (Putin's puppet), the Russian president is actually a complex figure. Since taking office in May 2008, Medvedev has portrayed himself as an ally of his mentor Putin, now prime minister. But there have been comments that suggest a growing tension between the two men. Medvedev, for instance, has complained about the pace of economic reform, and he has signaled a desire to replace the Putin-era apparatchiks who run the bureaucracy with his allies.

In remarks that were widely discussed in Russia, Medvedev noted earlier this year, "We can't move forward because the personnel reshuffle, the emergence of new people, has been very slow. We keep shuffling the same deck of cards." Many have noted that Medvedev, at 43, is 13 years Putin's junior and does not descend from the siloviki, the KGB-niks, defense officials, and other security personnel who comprise Russia's intelligence agencies and have resisted Western-style liberalism. Medvedev is an attorney and a former university lecturer, a man who, one imagines, has given some thought to the importance of the law, and he has made it clear that he appreciates the need for change.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in January 2007, nearly a year and a half before he became president, Medvedev acknowledged the need to curb corruption and diversify the economy -- this at a time when few, if any, Russian leaders felt compelled to acknowledge anything that conflicted with the prevailing bullishness. It would be wrong to portray Medvedev as a reformer.  Above all, he's a technocrat. But it would also be wrong to view him as the gray-faced executor of someone else's five-year plan. He is a man -- in some sense, like his counterpart in Washington -- who cares a great deal about what works.

Granted, there are many reasons to doubt that Russia is poised to forge a more constructive relationship with the United States: Putin remains (presumably) the most powerful man in the country, and the underlying systemic problems that have inhibited U.S.-Russian cooperation persist. No matter how many niceties Obama and Medvedev manage at their joint press conference, the United States and Russia will continue to butt heads about the future of Ukraine and Georgia. "The Obama administration has made clear that 'resetting' relations with Moscow does not mean accepting a Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space," says Steven Pifer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

But there is a sense that something must change. This sense is reflected in the everyday behaviors of ordinary people worried about their pensions and their jobs; it is felt in the increasingly combative press; it is evident at the highest levels. (Putin's recent very public spanking of oligarch Oleg Deripaska, in which the prime minister called the metals tycoon a greedy cockroach to his face, contrasts sharply with the chumminess of just a year or two ago, when optimism and consensus were the norm.) This development is not simply emotional, as if after eight years of worsening relations a sudden weariness has set in.

What is happening is historical, almost dialectic, a function of the sways and perturbations of global plate tectonics. For centuries, Russia has swung, with a metronome-like consistency, between a westernizing, outward-looking pole and an Oriental, inward-looking one. These swings have been demarcated by varying periods and intensities, but they are a constant; they are the constant. The signs of this most recent swing, or thaw, are there. The question for U.S. foreign policymakers is whether they take advantage of it.

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