Who’s surprised that the Obama administration, evolved, urbane and forward-looking, is having a hard time dealing with Vladimir Putin’s unreconstructed Cold War mentality in Ukraine? “We’re hoping that Russia will not see this as sort of a continuation of the Cold War,” John Kerry said last week.  Even before the Russian invasion of Crimea, Obama was warning of the dangers of seeing the world in terms of Great Power conflict. “We’re no longer in a Cold War,” the president said at the U.N. General Assembly in September. “There’s no Great Game to be won.”

Well, to paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you might not be interested in the Cold War, but the Cold War is interested in you.  In foreign policy you never get to dictate the rules entirely since the other players also have a say. That’s true even for superpowers, and doubly so for superpowers that choose to lead from behind. If you don’t want to be backed into the Cold War, then don’t choose a former KGB officer as your dance partner.