From Partner to Adversary

Charles Krauthammer, writing about Vladimir Putin in the Seattle Times:

He wants Gromyko’s influence - or at least some international acknowledgment that Moscow must be reckoned with - without the ideological baggage. He does not want to bury us; he only wants to diminish us. It is 19th-century power politics at its most crude and elemental. Putin does not want us as an enemy. But at Munich he told the world that, vis-à-vis America, his Russia has gone from partner to adversary.