Something profound has changed in American foreign policy since George Bush's re-election last November - we're seeing the return of a pre-9/11 preoccupation with Great Power politics and rogue states. This change is all the more remarkable since Bush won re-election mainly because he convinced a majority of Americans that he, unlike John Kerry, understood the terrorist threat and therefore would keep America safe.

Bush, no doubt, still believes this. But his foreign policy today no longer reflects the central preoccupation with terrorism that it once had. To a remarkable extent, talk of the global war on terror has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary in recent months. In the six months before the November elections, Bush used the phrase "war on terror" or its equivalent three times as often has he has done since. Indeed, he used the phrase less often these last six months than in the 30 days immediately prior to the elections.

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