An old Cold War is better than two new ones?

Remember that Russian saying about "старый друг лучше новых двух"? For some reason I thought of it when reading this announcement and call for papers (sent around in May on the Central-Eurasia-L email list) amidst all of the talk about a "new cold war":

U.S. Department of State Announces a Conference on U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente, 1969-1976

Washington, D.C., October 22-23, 2007

The U.S. Department of State will hold a scholarly conference on October 22-23, 2007, on U.S. Relations with the Soviet Union in the Era of Détente, 1969-1976. The conference will be hosted by the Office of the Historian in the Bureau of Public Affairs, and will take place in the new George C. Marshall Conference Center at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. The conference will feature keynote presentations on U.S.-Russian relations by Department of State principals and comments from former diplomats and senior scholars from both the United States and Russia. The conference will also include scholarly sessions that complement the forthcoming release of Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969-1972, a joint documentary publication undertaken by the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State and the Historical-Records Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I guess we could all use a bit of détente right about now.