After almost a generation of cold war and bipolarity the international situation is said to have been transformed. We have entered the postwar era at last, an age characterized by multipolarity and the sober pursuit of national interests. America, Russia and China are assumed to have at last abandoned their crusading approach to world affairs. In the Moscow, Shanghai and San Clemente communiqués issued after Summit conferences in 1972 and 1973 these great nations “took the pledge” to exercise restraint, moderation and similar virtues. A war- and world-weary United States eagerly embraces a lower profile abroad, gratefully bidding goodbye to thirty years of globalism.