Vaclav Klaus is in Moscow today, no doubt enjoying the Kremlin’s approbation for the fat middle finger he waved at Europe last week. As the Western media likes to point out, the  Czech president is fond of likening the European Union to the Soviet Union, a parallel he has not to date made regarding the Putin-Medvedev Russia of centralized power, NGO crackdowns, and murdered journalists.

But contradictions be damned. Basking in the glow of his own contrariness seems to be Klaus’ primary avocation in his final presidential term and, presumably, last turn in the political spotlight. (Who knows, though? After Klaus detonated his Lisbon bomb Friday, Czech political reporter Alexander Mitrofanov speculated to the Financial Times that his endgame might be securing a domestic base for when he leaves the Castle in 2013.) It’s hard not to see Klaus’s latest move as being much more about his self-image than about Czech sovereignty or a feared onslught of Sudeten German restitution suits, his latest card played in his self-appointed capacity of Protecting Europe From Itself. As the FT - not normally known as a hotbed of raging Brussophilia - noted yesterday in a blunt editorial, “If Mr. Klaus had really discerned a genuine vital national interest [on the Sudeten issue], he would presumably have raised it long ago, as other member-states have done.”

Indeed, he could have even mentioned it when the BBC rang him up last week for a comment on the Irish yes vote on the treaty. Rather than raise his concerns about the Charter of Fundamental Rights and a slew of restitution suits by the descendants of expelled Germans, Klaus sighed that there was no stopping Lisbon now. It was “too late,” he said. “That’s my clear message to the British people.” Or, perhaps, to David Cameron, who was widely thought to be courting Klaus to stall ratification until the Tories can win next spring’s British elections and stage-manage a national referendum that would sink the treaty once and for all.

Luckily for the would-be British PM, at some point between 2 and 9 October Klaus suddenly recognized the threat posed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Sudeten descendents, or the prospect that nobody would be forced to listen to him anymore. Even with EU leaders and Czech PM Jan Fischer treading lightly with the prickly president, it’s hard to see Klaus holding out until the scheduled British balloting in May. But one should never underestimate the man’s appetite for attention, secure in his self-regard as a rock-ribbed man of principle rather than a pompous buffoon.