It may sometimes be easier to fathom the foreign and security policy intentions of secretive states like China or even the Soviet Union of the Cold War than to figure out those of the United States. Power in Washington is dispersed between many agencies. Publicly released security policy documents are often written with different interest groups in mind, and may reflect compromises or scoring of points in turf battles, or attempts to impress Congress and public opinion.

Bearing this caveat in mind, certain observations may be in order on a few important policy documents on security that have emerged out of Washington this year, including the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) and the Quadrennial Defence Review.

There is renewed emphasis on alliances and partnerships with other countries, reflecting a change from the previous unilateralist tenor. International circumstances, especially the experiences of Iraq and the war on terrorism, have propelled the change, as well as the severe budgetary constraints that the US Administration faces.

However this should not be misread as change in core values and thinking. The top people in the Administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq — President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — are still there and the fifth who left, Colin Powell, was an ideological outsider. They are unlikely to have changed, within a few years, their deeply held core beliefs on global security and America's role in it. America's determination to remain the pre-eminent power and exercise global leadership also remains intact.

It seems clear that allies will be expected to share more of the security burdens in the future, though it is not clear to what extent they will be able to do so. NATO is already involved in Afghanistan and has assumed training responsibilities in Iraq. Australia is already described as a global partner in the long war. On India, with which US strategic cooperation is deepening, the NSS says it is “poised to shoulder global obligations in cooperation with the United States in a way befitting a major power.”