The US at the time did not seem to understand that a multipolar world order was emerging – one that would make it very difficult to pursue, without serious consequences, the policies that Bush and Clinton had discussed in 2000. In a 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin made this plain, vehemently rejecting the intervention in Iraq and especially US plans to expand antimissile defense systems to Europe, calling this an act of aggression toward Russia and a breach of common European security.