Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's recent visit to Venezuela and Cuba received some attention from the press, but little from the Bush administration and none from the Obama transition.

That is as it should be. With the announcement that the U.S. economy is definitely in recession, the backdrop of two wars and a provocative attack in India, the lame-duck Bush administration needs to focus its limited ability to shape events and focus on the top priorities.

For the transition team, President-elect Obama has consistently said the transition will focus on people then policy. But even after yesterday's national security team roll out in Chicago, it will be still quite some time before policy positions take real form. Indeed, with the sometimes-honored pledge to respect the one-president-at-a-time rule, we may not hear much policy until the Inaugural address.

But they are planning. And it is becoming clearer that Russia and Cuba offer two separate but increasingly intertwined opportunities for the Obama administration to really define itself.

In both cases, Washington's policy has been out of step with the rest of the international community and our hands are not as tied as they are in the cases of Iran or Iraq. That's a great situation in which the new team can make a clear and bold statement to the world that there is a new leader on the Potomac.

Russia's gambit is the Kremlin's version of the Cheney doctrine: a focus on using energy as geopolitical leverage, the re-establishment of a sphere of client states, and provocative but incremental moves to confirm their seriousness and intimidate neighbors. The rationale is simple: Moscow has little it can rely on as an attractive force, will be hammered by a shift to a global green economy and with Obama coming into office, time is running out to use the leverage they have.

Think of it as the Exxon-Mobil of the international community. Russia's entire economy is based on the the price of hydrocarbons and its leadership has decided that it is politically easier to dig in than to adapt. In addition, Russia's population is aging and shrinking, and by choosing to return to autocracy, its ability to innovate is inherently limited.

Cuba, as I've written before, is surviving on what I've called a "Yugoslav" strategy. Like Tito's successful playing off of East and West during the Cold War, Cuba is profiting from its strategic position in the Caribbean and its potential to be a thorn in the side of Washington. This time, however, the patrons are China, Venezuela, and Russia.

My colleague at New America, Steve Clemons, likes to tell a story of being in Beijing recently and asking what some of the leading minds at the leading foreign policy think tank were working on. Their reply: figuring out how to keep the U.S. distracted with little wars in the Middle East. Beijing and Moscow also realize that Cuba offers a similar kind of diplomatic obstacle, but one tailored to the Western Hemisphere.

That is, to the extent that the U.S.-Cuba relationship sits in its Cold War deep freeze, the U.S. relationship with Latin America will get atrophy further and provide more opportunities for trade and patronage deals for entrepreneurial powers, like Caracas, Beijing, and Moscow. As long as these nations keep Havana afloat in the global credit markets, providing it critical economic inputs and especially food, the U.S. strategy of isolation and regime change will continue to fail and there will be no chance to transform our relationship with the Western Hemisphere.

Ironically, both strategies, those of Cuba and Russia, are dependent upon the U.S. acting against our own interest. We need to build a new, sustainable relationship across the Western Hemisphere and we need to reduce our consumption of and vulnerability resulting from, oil.

President-elect Obama now has the chance to negate both gambits, by changing our strategy towards Cuba and by aggressively pursuing a decisive strategy to end not only America's, but the world's addiction to oil. The question in my mind is not whether Mr. Obama will do something on either of these issues. The question is whether he will go far enough to make a strategic difference.