While some experts praised the plan for its emphasis on cooperation with other nations, critics faulted it as empty phrasemaking, obscuring the administration's unilateral agenda of acquiring new nuclear arms, antimissile systems and space weapons.
On the positive side, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have agreed to begin high-level talks on antimissile systems and offensive nuclear arms.
Declaring that the United States was breaking with the past, President Bush talked last week about the need for a new strategic framework, without saying whether it would involve the negotiation of new treaties, or more informal understandings with Moscow, to limit antimissile systems or offensive nuclear arms.
A joint communiqué split the difference: it spoke of deterring "new threats with a strategy that encompasses both offensive and defensive systems," and continued reductions in nuclear arms and greater control over the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
"The worst geopolitical development would be for the world to break up once again into rigid bloc systems fortified by a new nuclear arms race," he counsels.
A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
Mr. Blair is expected to discuss Canada's views on a proposed American missile defense system, which Ottawa fears could set off a nuclear arms race with Russia and China.
Effective ABM systems have been sought since the Cold War, when the nuclear arms race raised the spectre of complete destruction by unstoppable ballistic missiles.
North Korea's nuclear test is a challenge to the system of self-restraint that has prevented a worldwide nuclear arms race.
President Barack Obama's final defense budget unveiled this month calls for a $1.8 billion hike in nuclear arms spending to overhaul the country's aging nuclear bombers, missiles, submarines and other systems.
