MOSCOW: The good news about President Vladimir Putin’s acerbic assault on American foreign policy in Munich last weekend is that the bad old days of global ideological confrontation - of blocs and proxy wars, dissidents and spies, arms races and mutually assured destruction - will probably remain in the dustbin of history.

The bad news is that Cold War II could be just as messy.

For all the talk of strategic partnership and even personal friendship between Putin and President George W. Bush, the relationship between Russia and the United States has reached its lowest point since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago. And with presidential elections in both countries coming in 2008, it is unlikely to get better, since candidates rarely score points at home by being conciliatory abroad.

The two countries are now openly competing for influence in Europe, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia, where access to natural resources and military bases has become paramount for both.

The Bush administration’s plan to build ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic is viewed with outright hostility here. So is NATO’s flirtation with Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics that Russia considers, rightly or wrongly, part of its historic sphere of influence.

Read more at the International Herald Tribune