This seems to me like a welcome dose of realism from the Obama administration:

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

This seems to have gone down during the Burns/McFaul trip to Moscow and I think it illustrates what I was saying about McFaul a couple of weeks ago—he combines a keen interest in democracy-promotion with a realistic understanding of Russia. What was so distressing about the Bush administration’s approach to this sort of thing wasn’t really that they put some kind of “ideals” ahead of “interests” but that they had no capacity to set priorities or ever make offers that had any chance of securing a “yes.” I can’t say whether or not Russia will accept this deal. But the deal would, if accepted, promote American interests. And, importantly, accepting it would also promote Russian interests thus making it at least plausible that they’ll say “yes.” It’s how diplomacy should be done.

“This is an agreement that, of course, will establish a missile defense site here in Poland, a missile defense site that will help us to deal with the new threat to the 21st century of long-range missile threats from countries like Iran or from North Korea,” Rice said yesterday at the Polish presidential palace in Warsaw.

As Spencer Ackerman wisely points out the idea of a North Korean missile attacking Poland is laughable and of an Iranian missile doing so only very slightly less so. The countries that Poland worries about are Russia and Germany; the countries with substantial missile arsenals are the United States and Russia; the country that this would defend Poland against if it worked (which it doesn’t) is Russia.