Free Republic

Summary: Controversies over the war in Iraq and U.S. unilateralism have overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: its attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power and the emergence of states such as China and India. This unheralded move is well intentioned and well advised, and Washington should redouble its efforts.

Mr Putin and Mr Gates are both former spies So will the 43rd Munich Security Conference be remembered as the start of a new Cold War? That is probably the single most important question to emerge from this long weekend of speeches and private chats among the world's most powerful. Certainly Russian President Vladimir Putin's strident speech stands out from the crowd. In it, to recap, he strongly criticised the US and its European allies, with his harshest criticism reserved for Washington. The US had, he said, overstepped its borders in every way, seeking to impose its will on...

Mr Putin said the US "has overstepped its borders" The Munich security conference was born in the 1960s - the height of the Cold War. Forty years on, there been talk of a new chill. Given the tone and content of Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to the gathered defence ministers, parliamentarians and pundits, it is not, perhaps, hard to see why. Warming quickly to his task after only the briefest of greetings, President Putin accused the US of establishing, or trying to establish, a "uni-polar" world. "What is a uni-polar world? No matter how we beautify this term,...