"The risk for Jon Huntsman if the relationship goes into the deep freeze is that he won't have much of a job to do," said Steve Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who was the U.S. ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union during President Bill Clinton's last term. "Moscow can be a lonely place for an American ambassador if the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry freeze him out. That would be a mistake for them, since in Huntsman they're getting somebody with exceptionally good Washington political connections."