Does the West have a policy of encircling Russia?

The thorny issue of the missile defence shield is still live, and deployments of US patriot missile systems in former Soviet states close to the Russian border are starting to rankle with the Kremlin. Moscow will, of course, be aware of the policy of “encirclement” that it pursued during the Cold War, and the unsettling effect that it had on the west. Indeed, the policy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when Russian missiles were deployed in Cuba in 1962. Possibly the west might reflect on those terrifying events, and reconsider the implications of its own actions, and the very clear policy of encirclement that it is now pursuing.
 
Lets us consider:From March 17-20, NATO warplanes will conduct exercises in the Baltic Sea region over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three nations border Russia's mainland or its Kaliningrad territory. The drills will include French Mirage 2000, Polish F-16, and Lithuanian L-39 Albatross fighters, along with U.S. aerial tankers. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dillschneider, spokesman for the Allied Air Headquarters in Ramstein, Germany, described the purpose of the upcoming air exercises near Russia's north-western border as "to demonstrate solidarity with NATO’s Baltic members."
 
In June, 500 U.S. Marines and Estonian troops will participate in ten days of exercises in northern Estonia, a hundred kilometres from the Russian border.
 
Later in the year NATO will conduct war games in the Baltic Sea region with over 2,000 personnel from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the U.S. These exercises will be the largest since the three Baltic countries joined the alliance.
 
The US guided missile destroyer USS John L. Hall has recently been deployed to the Black Sea port of Poti. Although officially there to conduct exercises with the Georgian coastguard, the warship’s arrival coincided precisely with Amphibious landing exercises, involving a dozen Russian ships and ground forces, on the coast of Abkhazia. The US destroyer monitored the action from a distance of just a few miles.
 
On March 1, the new U.S. ambassador to Georgia, John Bass, presided over the launching of the fourth radar installation on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed the installation, although it is uncertain as to who will operate it at this stage. It should be remembered that Georgian troops are currently being trained by, and are due to come under the command of, the US Marine Corps.
 
Russia has been subject to much criticism over the way it has dragged its heels in the START-2 negotiations. In the context of present western policy, however, this might be understandable. Medvedev responded quickly and honourably to the decision to cancel the Czech-based missile defence shield, by cancelling the deployment of Russian missiles to Kaliningrad. NATO exercises in the North Atlantic are hardly newsworthy in themselves, but the involvement of the westward-leaning Baltic states is highly unnerving, and extremely embarrassing for Russia. Coupled with US involvement in Georgia, the Kremlin is starting to get nervous. With presidential elections looming in 2012, and Putin’s popularity shored up by the return of Ukraine to the eastern fold, Medvedev may begin to feel beleaguered. In such a situation, he might feel the need to strike out. The west should be supporting Medvedev, not compromising him as it is doing at the moment.