SINGAPORE -- Speaking earlier this month to the inaugural Asian Security Conference, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz suggested Washington's latest vision for a post-Cold War world. Held here under the auspices of London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, the conference brought together official representatives from some 20 countries to focus on the ongoing war on terror.
American delegate Wolfowitz took full advantage of this high-level, multilateral forum to cast the war in terms that confronted Southeast Asia with the risk of a return to some of the greatest trials of its post-1945 history.
Wolfowitz outlined a pattern of American engagement with Asia and the rest of the world framed above all by the fight against terrorism. That fight, he said, was part of "larger war," waged for "tolerance and freedom," "pluralism and democracy" and "real economic development."