In a clear effort to counter proposed US missile defense shield over central Europe across Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia is to deploy short range lethal Iskander missiles in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. This is a clear indication on the part of Moscow that the US missile defense shield plan has rattled Russian feathers to such extent that the Kremlin is drawing up blueprints for a possible future clash with NATO.

Revealing of the plans to move the Iskander missiles near the Baltic coast on Russia’s far west in his first state-of-the-nation address, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow would deploy the missiles in the Kaliningrad region to “neutralize, if necessary, the (US) anti-missile system.”

On a day when the United States elected a new President, Russia’s decision presents a whole new ball game for President-elect Barack Obama who has to take concrete steps to maintain a critical foreign policy balance with Moscow when he takes office at the White House. Russia’s emergence as a major political and economical power after years of chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union has led to a new form of ideological clash with the west which gets determined by Moscow’s key role as a leading energy producer.

NATO’s extension near the western borders of Russia has irked the Kremlin politicians so much that small ex-Soviet states, on the verge of joining the EU and NATO, are regularly subjected to bullying tactics brought about by their over dependence on Russian oil and gas. August’s five day brutal war with Georgia bears the hallmark of a savage Russian military and economic policy aimed at preventing the US and NATO from extending their reach towards countries such as the Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

In his speech, President Medvedev has raised the political stake by directly blaming the US for the war in Georgia. The Russian leader was adamant in his speech when he was quoted as saying that, “the conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending NATO warships to the Black Sea and also for the hoisting on Europe of America’s anti-missile systems.”

President Medvedev, the successor of Vladimir Putin, has vowed that his country would never back off from the Caucasus raising prospects of further tensions in the volatile yet strategically-rich mountainous region.